


give me (ninety-one) percent

by hoarderhangover



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dorks in Love, Fluff and Angst, Friends With Benefits, Insecure Louis, Kind of Anti-Soulmate, Louis must be protected fight me, M/M, Making Out, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Zayn Malik/Liam Payne, Nerd Louis, Past Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles, Strangers to Lovers, Theater Harry Styles, it's so soft, kind of, soft, soft sci-fi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-01-23 02:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 41,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18540343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoarderhangover/pseuds/hoarderhangover
Summary: Oh, god. Does this mean they’re Matched? With each other?Louis is horrified. Harry is tall and gangly and part of the Performing Arts club and he wears pink-and-yellow polka dot ties to class and laughs comfortably in big groups of friends and sells illegal porn of himself to their classmates and Louis is—Louis. There’s nothing wrong with Harry exactly but—he’s dating Nick, or he was dating Nick, and Louis has been picturing someone—well, quieter.orA soft sci-fi, futuristic AU where everyone gets Matched with a romantic partner at the age of 18. Louis's a bit of a socially awkward nerd, and Harry's a theater kid with a boyfriend. And now they're stuck together, Matched for the next three months, and how's that supposed to work out?





	1. if the shoe fits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, thanks for checking this out! I'm not even sure if Larry is even a thing anymore, but here this is, in case anyone's still in the fandom, lol. The story is completed, so I'll try to keep a regular posting schedule.
> 
> Title is from Loote's 85%, although of course the percent is changed, haha.

The brain scan only takes seconds, but Louis still grips the metal stool hard as the machines whirr around his head. He hopes the machines scan good things in his head, things that will Match him to a nice, beautiful boy. In the past, his brain scans have always gone badly, but this is the night they really matter. 

 

In less than two hours, Louis will be Matched. 

 

“You may stand,” says the professor overseeing his compatibility test. She taps at her handheld transparent tablet, submitting Louis’s results. Somewhere in cyberspace, the computer system will compare Louis’s scores to everyone else’s scores and Match him to one of the other students. Louis clambers off the stool, and the professor points to the door. 

 

“Waiting room 2-B. First door to your left. I will come to collect you to meet your Match.” 

 

“Yes, sir,” says Louis, as the professor turns to the line of students waiting for their turns. It’s Matching night for everyone at their academy, and in all the academies under the Universal Alliance. Everyone in Year 18, all over the world, is being Matched at the same time. 

 

It’s the biggest night of Louis’s life, and he’s practically vibrating with anxiety and excitement. 

 

The Matching officially starts at eight PM, but it’s almost nine by the time all fifty kids are packed into Louis’s waiting room, and the other waiting rooms are full, too. The predetermined Matches, the couples who are choosing to stay together instead of getting Matched to someone decided through the computer system, have been assigned their own room. 

 

Slowly Louis’s waiting room empties out as the professor comes to take the students out one by one. Louis tries reading the news on his tablet, but he keeps bouncing his leg, and he can’t focus. By ten o’clock, it’s just Louis, a heavily inked boy named Zayn, and a blonde boy named Niall who is known for vaping in class. And then the professor comes and collects Zayn, and then there’s only two, and minutes later the professor is back, saying, “Niall Horan.” 

 

And then there’s one. 

 

Louis jiggles his leg, watching the clock. How many students have they Matched already? How many are still waiting? 

 

He presses the  _ on  _ button on his tablet. He wants to contact Liam, but the professors always turn off their connection during ceremonies like this. Have they Matched Liam with somebody yet? He gets the intrusive thought that they’ll bring him to meet his Match and it’ll be him, but that feels wrong.

 

It won’t happen, anyway. The compatibility tests are rarely wrong. The technology can tell your deepest personality traits and Match you with someone you’ll probably spend the rest of your life with. 

 

It’s ten-thirty, and Louis is thirsty.

 

It’s eleven o’clock. It’s eleven-thirty, and Louis knows now that something is wrong. He can tell. There are no more rumbles of voices passing by the closed door of his waiting room, no footsteps over his head. The ticking of the clock is even louder in the silence. He twists his sweaty hands together, trying to breathe, trying not to watch the door. 

 

Something is wrong. It’s probably his compatibility again. Louis’ compatibility scores have always been low, ever since the professors started doing the brain scans when he was eleven.  But he always thought that, even if his general compatibility was low, there would be  _ someone.  _ Someone perfect for him. Someone who’d want him. 

 

Somehow, in all of his daydreaming about how tonight might pan out, he’s never stopped to consider the possibility that he’s not compatible with  _ anyone  _ in this academy. 

 

He knows this happens sometimes. Usually, each academy has to transfer out a couple of kids during Matching. The professors don’t  _ call  _ them “the Rejects,” but that’s what everyone else calls them. 

 

Louis fists his hands on his knees. Maybe he’s not a Reject. Maybe they’re just running late. 

 

It’s eleven forty-five, and Louis fights back tears, because he’s eighteen and he’s not going to get caught looking stupid when the professors eventually come to get him. He tries to think about something else. He thinks about the solar system that scientists have recently discovered, the confirmation that some of the planets are livable, the technology that might be able to get them there. He thinks about how the article he read about how if you drop a cat, it will always land on its feet. 

 

It’s eleven-fifty-three before a professor opens the door. 

 

Louis jerks forward in his chair, stumbling to his feet. He wipes his sweaty hands on the back of his khaki shorts. The professor has short hair and a thick beard, and he’s almost comically short, shorter than Louis, stocky in that uniform. The beard looks like it might just be there to make him appear older. Louis rubs his hand hastily over his face, hoping it doesn’t look dirty from crying. 

 

“Am I—are you transferring me?” he asks. His voice is scratchy, and he swallows. The professor is looking behind him, opening the door farther and stepping into the room. There’s someone else behind him, and Louis shuffles quickly away from the chair, trying to stand up straight. Multiple professors. They’re coming to tell him the bad news. He doesn’t have a Match. 

 

“You boys will have to wait here for just a minute,” says the professor, and Louis realizes that the boy coming in after him isn’t another professor. It’s another student, rubbing at his own face, sniffing loudly—it’s Harry Styles, who’s famous (infamous?) for shooting porn of himself and his boyfriend in Year 16 and selling it illegally to their classmates. 

 

Harry Styles, face red from crying, choking back sobs as he half-hides behind the professor, which doesn’t work very well because Harry’s about six feet tall, several inches taller than Louis. 

 

And where’s his boyfriend? Where’s Nick, the other half of the Porn Entrepreneurs? This doesn’t make any sense. 

 

With a dropping feeling in his stomach, Louis realizes that Harry must be getting Rejected, too. 

 

“I’ll be back as soon as I have more information,” says the professor, turning around and wiggling out of the room past Harry, who hasn’t moved from the doorway. He’s still crying, and Louis is conscious of the tear streaks probably on his own face. He must look terrible. He must look so awkward. Maybe Harry is a Reject, too, but somehow that doesn’t make it better, that he now knows that no one was compatible with Louis, that no one wanted him. 

 

And then the professor leaves, scraping the door shut, and Louis is left staring at a guy who filmed himself having sex so he could make extra cash, and he has no idea, no idea at all, how long they’re going to be here. 

 

* * *

  
  


It’s five past midnight, and they’ve been sitting in silence except for Harry’s stifled sniffling. Louis tries not to watch him, but he’s such a big guy, legs stretched out of his chair, reaching halfway across the tiny room. Louis has never seen someone that big cry like this. 

 

They’re Rejects now, though, so he guesses it’s normal to be crying. He wonders what happened to Nick. 

 

Harry wipes his face with the palm of his hand, taking a shuddering breath, and Louis clears his throat quietly. Harry turns his head, peering at him with red eyes. The curly ends of his hair are sticking to the sides of his tear-stained face. 

 

“Um,” says Louis, and his voice sounds loud in the room. “If you don’t mind me asking.” Of course Harry minds him asking. But it’s eleven-fifty, and he doesn’t know what the actual fuck is going on. “What happened to Nick? Isn’t he your boyfriend?” Nick is Harry’s other half, his bodyguard, his fellow porn star. Seeing Harry without Nick is like...like seeing him naked. 

 

Harry grips his knees. His whole face is red and his hair is a mess, and Louis feels like he’s intruding, he  _ is  _ intruding, and it’s not just the personal questions. Harry’s an ugly crier, it feels impolite to be in such close quarters with someone who’s crying and be so dry-eyed. But he’s also not sure how to cry in front of Harry, how to relax enough to feel anything. He’s so numb, so stiff. 

 

“He  _ was, _ ” Harry says, his voice scratchy, and he coughs, rubbing at his cheek again. He’s got one of those voices so deep that sometimes it’s hard to hear, and Louis scoots his chair closer to catch the rest. He waits for a few beats before realizing that there is no rest. 

 

“So, uh.” Louis doesn’t want to pry, except that they’re sort of stuck in here and he would like to have at least a little information. “Why aren’t you being Matched with him?”

 

Harry makes a strangled noise, wiping his mouth. His hand comes away wet. “He didn’t want to. Changed his mind...it was a, a last minute thing...said he’d been...he said he’d been wrong.” He screws up his face, his eyes puffy as tears leak out of the corners. 

 

Louis stares at him, trying to figure this out. Nick just  _ changed his mind?  _ They’ve been strutting through the hallways holding hands for...for at least two years, Louis is pretty sure, maybe longer if he’d been paying better attention. That’s two years to make up your mind that you want to be Matched. The whole academy has been turned upside down in preparation for the Matching for months, and Nick waited until  _ tonight  _ to change his mind?

 

“Oh,” says Louis, trying to think of something nice to say. “That’s terrible. I’m, uh, I’m really sorry.”

 

Harry scrubs at his face, his nose and forehead scrunched up. He looks miserable, and he really  _ is  _ ugly like this, even though Louis feels ungracious thinking it. 

 

“I  _ know _ ,” says Harry, hiccuping. He turns away from Louis again, rubbing both of his hands over his face. Louis tucks his hands under his thighs, pressing into the hard plastic chair. Maybe he should be saying something else, something to comfort Harry, but what he is supposed to say? He barely knows Harry, and there’s not much comfort for Rejects, anyway. 

 

He listens to Harry’s stifled crying, the choking breaths he’s taking every several seconds, the occasional shuddering breath out. Louis curls his fingers against the seat of his chair, his stubby nails scraping painfully against the plastic. Harry hasn’t asked why he’s here. Louis knows it’s painfully obvious—at least someone wanted Harry at some point in his life, but Louis’s always been stuck looking around him wondering when everyone else got so many friends, wondering when he fell behind. Of course no one in the academy is compatible with him. Of course, of course. 

 

Before he knows it, he’s talking. “Do you think we’ll take the Hyperloop tonight?” he asks. He’s read articles about Rejects, because he was curious and not because he ever thought he’d need the information, but the articles never gave specifics, like _ what time exactly  _ and  _ what do the professors say to you.  _ “Or do you think they’ll wait until tomorrow? It’s almost—“ He glances at the big metal clock. It’s technically morning, now. 

 

Harry rubs his face with one big hand and looks at Louis. “What do you mean?” he asks. 

 

Louis frowns—the last time he checked the class ranking, which was yesterday, Harry was still just two points behind himself, near the top of the class. How does he not know that when you’re not compatible with anybody, you get transferred to Rejects? Everyone knows—

 

“The Hyperloop already came,” says Harry. “They took Ashton and—and Nick.” His voice cracks on a choked sob, and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand again. “They said they were gonna...we might…”

 

He doesn’t say what they _ might,  _ or maybe he does and Louis just doesn’t hear because he’s struggling to process anything right now—he stares at Harry’s wet mouth and wet eyelashes and sticking-up hair and—what? What? The Rejects already left, and—and that means that  _ they  _ aren’t Rejects, Louis’s not a Reject, but—

 

Does this mean they’re  _ Matched?  _ With  _ each other?  _

 

Louis is horrified. Harry is tall and gangly and part of the Performing Arts club and he wears pink-and-yellow polka dot ties and butterfly hair pins to class and laughs comfortably in big groups of friends and sells illegal porn  _ of himself  _ to their  _ classmates  _ and Louis is—Louis. There’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with Harry exactly but—he’s dating Nick, or he  _ was _ dating Nick, and Louis has been picturing someone—well,  _ quieter. _

 

The door scrapes against the floor and they both jump. The same professor stands in the doorway, beckoning to them. “Come on,” he says. “It’s late.” 

 

It is late, but Louis’s surprised the professor admitted it. Usually they pretend like everything is working perfectly, like every mistake is intentional. He stands up along with Harry, who looks like he has new tears on his face. The professor leads them out into the dark hallway. The whole academy is quiet, and Louis can still hear Harry sniffling. He trails behind him and the professor, his mind still racing. He and Harry are being  _ Matched.  _ Of everyone he thought he might get, Harry wasn’t even on the list. 

 

Louis feels kind of sick. 

 

The professor pauses at another door, holding it open so that he and Harry can go inside. It’s the room where Louis took his compatibility test, with several professors standing around a table and a large computer screen. A woman is tapping at the computer’s control settings, pulling up the compatible graphs up on the screen. 

 

The professor who brought them there steps to the side, against the wall, and Louis stays to Harry’s left, just behind him. When the woman turns around, her eyes go to Harry, and Louis is silently thankful that he’s so much bigger and louder and has been crying more. It’s easy to ignore Louis when Harry is there. 

 

“Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson,” says the professor. She’s older, graying, and there are lines around her mouth. She isn’t smiling. “This is inconvenient.” 

 

Inconvenient? Louis glances towards the guy who brought them there, but he’s staring resolutely ahead, mouth hidden in his bushy beard. The woman makes it sound like this has been  _ their  _ fault, but Louis hasn’t even  _ done  _ anything. All he’s done is sat in the waiting room for hours, waiting and waiting for what was supposed to be one of the best nights of his life to start. He can feel embarrassing tears pricking his eyes again, and he swallows quickly, hoping that his thick glasses hide it. 

 

“Well, boys,” says the professor. “You have both listed a possible preference for boys under Form 21-B, so unless you have objections, you are welcome to view your compatibility and decide if you are willing to enter the trial period.” 

 

Her sentence hangs unfinished in the air, and Louis knows that she means that if they decide  _ not  _ to enter the trial period, they will automatically be transferred to the Rejects’ academy. He also knows that if they  _ do  _ decide to enter the trial period, they will be stuck together for three months, and then they’ll probably decline their Match and get transferred to the post-grad Rejects’ academy anyway. 

 

Harry is hiccupping in front of him, and Louis is beginning to think he’ll have to answer her himself when Harry wipes his mouth again. “We—can we—can we view it?” 

 

He glances over his shoulder, his lips parted, like he’s asking Louis’s permission. In the harsher lights of this room, Louis can see that the skin around his mouth is red and chapped, and he has the random thought that if Harry has an infection, he might catch it. He wipes his hands on the back of his pants. 

 

“Yes,” he says, partly to Harry and partly to the professor. “May we?” 

 

The professor thins her mouth in what Louis hopes is a smile and turns back to the controls. A few clicks, and Harry’s name appears on one side of the screen, the graphs filling up with numbers—Louis glimpses a high “charisma” score, a high “creativity” score—and then Louis’s name on the other side. The only thing he sees is his “intelligence” score shooting up before their individual stats shrink to make room for the larger compatibility graph filling the screen. 

 

Louis holds his breath while the thing loads, waiting for the compatibility meter to fill up. He blinks, and the graph is still stuck where it was, and, oh, oh. It doesn’t need to load. Their compatibility percentage is already blinking at the bottom of the screen in big, silver letters. 

 

Nineteen percent. Their Match is only nineteen percent compatible. 

 

Louis swallows hard, pressing his stubby nails into the palms of his fists. He wasn’t expecting a very high score, but he thought it would be at least in the thirties, where the unsuccessful Matches usually land. But  _ nineteen?  _ That’s basically guaranteed failure. 

 

He looks at Harry. From this angle, he can only see that Harry is chewing on his fingernails. He wants to have a minute alone with Harry, without Harry crying, ask him what he really thinks about this, if he thinks it’s worth it. Maybe he’d rather go to the Rejects’ academies and try to find Nick, try to change his mind back again. 

 

But Louis doesn’t want to leave. This academy, this enclosure—it’s his home, it has been for two years. These classmates, even though most of them don’t know him, they’ve been his family since he was born. He’s not ready to transfer to a Rejects’ academy, which will be a stain on his resume for the rest of his life. 

 

Harry glances over at him, his forehead furrowed. Louis gives him a pleading look, and Harry looks at the screen and then at the floor. Louis’s heart seizes in panic. Harry is going to say no. 

 

(What about him is so incompatible?)

 

Harry shuffles backwards, so he’s standing closer to Louis. “I guess...I guess we have to try,” he says, in a small voice, and when Louis looks up at his face again he has tears running down his cheeks. 

 

Louis’s heart aches. His Match is supposed to smile at him. His Match is supposed to be excited to try, excited to get to know Louis better, excited for their first kiss and their first night together. His Match isn’t supposed to be  _ crying,  _ like the prospect of being Matched with Louis is unbearable. 

 

Louis knows he’s being unfair—Harry just got dumped by the boy who was supposed to be  _ his  _ Match—but he still feels like Harry is being selfish. Doesn’t he know how this makes Louis feel? 

 

“I guess so,” he says. His voice is scratchy, rough from the crying and misuse. Suddenly all he wants is to be in bed, wrapped up in blankets, maybe cry until he’s too tired to cry anymore and then fall asleep. And maybe sleep in, for once. They don’t have class tomorrow. 

 

The professor is talking about paperwork, and Louis goes to the table to sign it. He makes an effort to read every line, but Harry just flips over the form and signs a big curly signature at the bottom. He drops the pen on top of it. Out of the corner of his eye, because he’s definitely not watching, Louis can see his hands shaking. They’re chapped and red and peeling, just like the skin around his mouth. 

 

Louis hopes he doesn’t have a skin infection. He turns his own form over, reads the back, signs the bottom. It’s almost over, he hopes, as the professors dip sharp pens into semi-permanent ink and gesture for Harry and Louis to hold their right arms out. 

 

It only takes a couple seconds, very little pain, and Louis has  _ Styles  _ written on his wrist. A name that, in another world maybe, if they accepted their Match, would get tattooed on in three months, signalling a whole life together. 

 

Louis just wants to sleep. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who checked this out! My soul is fueled my comments, but no pressure, of course. Feel free to rec other 1d fics to me in the comments if you're writing anything fun!


	2. it isn't rocket science

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments on the last chapter, they really made my day! I can't promise updates will always come this quickly, but since it's the weekend I wanted to get this out there.

Louis has always had problems with his compatibility. The academy professors begin analyzing general compatibility in Year 13, just when Louis starts getting acne and voice cracks. It’s the year that everyone decides that solving puzzles in the maths lab isn’t “cool,” and Louis finds himself without any friends. 

 

His general compatibility scores for that first test, when he’s just thirteen, are very low. Afterwards, when the testing room is empty and it’s just him, the computers, and one of his professors, she tells him, “We might have to transfer you.” 

 

“Wh—what?” splutters Louis, staring in a panic at the scores lit up on the big screen. The computer system had analyzed his brain and his recorded interactions with his peers, and small type at the bottom of the screen proclaims,  **Difficulty navigating social situations. Tendency to withdraw.**

 

“That’s what happens when you don’t get along with your classmates,” says the professor, tapping at her handheld tablet and wiping the big screen clear. 

 

Louis’s just a kid—he doesn’t understand. Sure, he spends most of his time alone, and he always sits in the front of the classrooms and calls out answers to the professors’ questions when he can’t help it, but no one is  _ mean  _ to him. 

 

“You need to work on your approachability,” says the professor. 

 

Louis knows what approachability is, but he isn’t at all sure how to go about working on it. He’s not interested in the things the other kids are interested in, like professional sports and roughhousing. He’d rather read a book in the cafeteria than hang out with Harry Styles and his big group of friends, who are always dying their hair different colors or getting into trouble. 

 

Before the compatibility tests, Louis’s never failed anything before. He’s near the top of his class, almost the very top. Being transferred is an equally foreign concept—the only times he ever left the enclosure of his academy is when his entire class moves locations, once every three years. He’s known the same thousand or so kids since he was born and placed into the academy, to be raised and educated along with every other infant born under the Universal Alliance. 

 

Starting at a new academy halfway to graduation would be social suicide for someone like him. So the week after that test, he tries to start a conversation with his lab partner in Molecular Biology, a boy named Liam Payne who has kind eyes and a shy smile. 

 

His scores continue to be low, but the professors never transfer him, and Louis is relieved.

 

* * *

 

Louis wakes up feeling heavy and tired and warm. He keeps his eyes closed, relaxing against the two pillows under his head. He can feel Harry’s warm back pressed up against his own. The bed is big enough that Louis could easily scoot away, but it’s warmer like this, and he doesn’t want to move. He inhales. The pillows smell nice, like a fancy detergent. It’s still dark in the room, and he’s comfortable, so comfortable. 

 

It’s like he’s been Matched for real. 

 

Fantasizing isn’t something that Louis does, so he doesn’t allow himself to think about what it would be like if Harry really was his Match, if they’d been Matched because of their compatibility and not as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being Rejects. If he could snuggle back into the warmth at his back. He just breathes in the nice detergent smell and tries to logic out the best plan of action now. 

 

He’s trying to guess which of their traits complemented each other to allow for that nineteen percent of compatibility (what could he possibly have in common with Harry, who once wore a dress to class “just for fun”?) when Harry shifts behind him, grunting. 

 

Louis opens his eyes, just a little. He can see a faint glow from the window, but it’s not too bright, so he opens his eyes farther, rubbing at one of them. Harry rolls onto his back, rubbing against Louis. Louis can feel his shirt ruck up, and he untangles his hand from the blankets to pull it back down, thinking how a lot of couples probably had sex for the first time tonight, now that it’s finally allowed. 

 

Harry has already had sex, even though it’s against the rules before Matching night. That gives Louis a metallic taste in his mouth, so he sits up. He doesn’t look at Harry. It feels rude. Neither of them really want to be here, in this bed together, and Harry is, well, he’s just waking up, so he’s probably ugly. Waking up together is somehow more intimate than going to bed together. 

 

Harry clears his throat, a wet sound. “I’m sorry for last night,” he says. His voice is even deeper now, and Louis’s head swims from sitting up too quickly. 

 

He can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t sound whiny. He swallows. His mouth tastes gross—he really needs to brush his teeth. 

 

“It’s okay,” he says, even though it isn’t. He doesn’t want to talk to Harry. He wants to go back in time and do last night over again, get Matched with someone else, someone who wants him, but he knows that isn’t logical so he pushes the blankets back. 

 

Harry sits up beside him, making the bed shift. Louis swings his legs over the side, peeling off last night’s socks. “You can have first shower,” says Harry, his voice lifting slightly as if this might make things better. 

 

“Thanks,” says Louis. 

 

He does take the first shower, too self-conscious to play his music and sing along like he did in the single dorms, and then changes clothes while Harry has his turn in the bathroom. 

 

He doesn’t turn on his tablet, because he can see the transparent screen blinking with new messages and he knows that Liam is probably excited about his own Match. He knows he’s being selfish, but he’ll see Liam at lunch. He’ll meet Liam’s Match, and maybe he’ll meet Harry. Maybe.

 

Now that reality has set in, so has Harry. Nineteen percent compatibility or not, he’s still Matched with Harry Styles. What will people say? Everyone will ask questions. Harry and Nick are a package deal, everyone knows that. You buy porn of one, you buy porn of the other, that’s what people say. They sat together in all their classes, held hands at the same lunch table, hung out with the same friends. Friends wildly different from Louis’s own. 

 

He remembers, a little, when Harry was transferred to their Station in Year 10. Back then, Harry was tinier than anyone else, a little curly fluffball who tagged after the bigger kids. He had spent a lot of time in the maths lab with Louis, coding puzzles and battling chess bots with him and a few of the other nerdy kids. 

 

The memories are vague, and they peter out around Year 13, when the maths lab began to get emptier and emptier. He doesn’t really know what happened, but the next thing he remembers is Harry hanging out with cool kids, wearing glittering pink headbands and growing his hair out longer. Louis never sees him in the library anymore, and sometimes he wonders if Harry even studies.

 

They’re not friends. They’ve barely even had full conversations since they were pre-teens. Are they going to be expected to sit together at meals, now? Hang out with the same people? Hold hands? 

 

Harry comes out of the bathroom. His hair is freshly blow-dried and he has permanently red-stained cheeks, and Louis can’t help thinking  _ skin infection that I might catch.  _ He’s struck again by how big Harry is, and how uncomfortable he seems in his own skin, fumbling with his pajamas and rubbing his shoulder, hovering over the laundry basket before dropping his pajamas into it. Louis pretends to be focused on pulling specks of lint off his socks. 

 

“Hey, Louis,” says Harry, and Louis looks up. Of course Harry knows his name, but he still hadn’t expected him to use it. “Hey, you know, we don’t have to tell people about, like…” He waves a hand vaguely. Even his hands are big. “Our compatibility score. We don’t have to say anything.” 

 

Louis watches his hands. Harry is wearing a blue-and-white striped V-neck, and for someone in the depths of despair, he sure has the energy to dress well. “But people are going to ask,” he says, trying not to sound pissed off. “Everyone is going to ask why you’re not with Nick.” 

 

Harry winces, turning away from him, fiddling with a hairbrush he’s set on the vanity. “Yeah. Well. I’ll take care of that part, yeah? You can just tell people that we got Matched together. I mean, if you want to.” 

 

Louis isn’t stupid. He realizes that Harry thinks this will ruin Louis’s reputation, that everyone will feel sorry for him when they realize that he was almost Rejected because he wasn’t compatible with anyone. 

 

And, well, it is kind of embarrassing. Louis hasn’t even considered lying, but now that Harry’s suggesting it, well. No one  _ has  _ to know the whole truth. They  _ were  _ Matched together. No one is required to divulge their specific compatible score, and it’s all confidential, the professors will never say anything. No one will know about Louis’s low general compatibility, no one will know that the only reason he’s Matched with Harry is because of a last-minute wrinkle in the plans. 

 

Harry is talking again, still looking down, fiddling with his various beauty supplies. “We can just say that after Nick, you were my next most compatible. We can just flip the score, to make it easy to remember. Ninety-one percent, like, we can say.” 

 

It’s not an entirely bad idea, but. “But no one will believe it,” he hears himself say. 

 

Harry looks up. It’s a small room, and Louis is sitting close enough to him to see that his eyes are bloodshot under the curls sitting across his forehead. “Why not?”

 

Louis feels his chest and neck heat up, and he shifts on the bed, tugging in his socks. He hadn’t thought this through. He can’t tell the truth, he can’t say  _ “because no one will believe that someone like you, someone who sold illegal homemade porn and dances in musicals, would be Matched with someone like me.”  _ He can’t say that, because it’s rude, and Louis is supposed to be working on his approachability. “Well,” he says. 

 

Harry furrows his eyebrows and says, “You don’t think people’ll believe that we’re compatible?” 

 

“Well,” says Louis again, “we’re so different, you see, and people are sure to notice.” 

 

“Mate,” says Harry. Louis has never been called mate in his life, much less from someone wearing what looks like black nail polish. “No one will know what our individual stats looked like, they won’t figure it out. We can just—we can just say that the sex is amazing, or something.” 

 

Louis feels even hotter now.  _ He  _ can’t say that—doesn’t Harry understand that he can’t say something like that aloud? He’s not a self-made porn star. “Well,” he says again, and it squeezes his heart when he thinks about how weird this is, that he’s making negotiations with his Match on the “morning after,” talking about fake sex that they didn’t have. (Never will have.) It’s a bit pathetic.

 

“If you don’t…” Harry pushes the beauty products away and hooks both of his thumbs into his pockets. His shoulders are hunched, but he’s still looking at Louis. “If you don’t want to, we don’t have to.” 

 

Louis looks at the floor, at the neat little nondescript rug, and thinks about telling people about the sick feeling that had set in last night as he waited for hours to be Matched. He thinks about the pitying look on people’s faces. “Alright,” he says. “We can just tell people it was...it was intentional.” 

 

When he glances up again, Harry is giving him a half-smile. He has deep dimples, and it makes Louis’s stomach twist painfully. “Okay,” he says. “C’mon, I think lunch is starting in a minute.” 

 

Louis nods wordlessly, standing up. He thinks about seeing Liam, meeting his Match, and his stomach twists again with something like jealousy. He can hear voices outside already, though, so he shoves his socked feet into his shoes and follows Harry out the door. 

 

Almost immediately, a blonde guy comes hurtling down the hall and crashing into Harry. Harry staggers, and the guy—it’s Niall Horan, he’s in Louis’s Literary Analysis class—looks past him and sees Louis and his eyebrows go up, his mouth dropping open. “Harry, mate!” he says. “Where the fuck is Nick?” 

 

Harry glances back at Louis, too, and he makes a face in either apology or pain. “A lot happened last night,” he says, quietly, so Louis can barely hear him over the guys shouting somewhere down the hall about “the booty.” 

 

Niall looks shocked, but Harry just grabs his arm, guiding him down the hall. 

 

Louis trails after them, unsure what he should be doing. Several other people catch up to them in the halls, and a few couples come out of dorms and join Harry and his other friends. Everyone they pass is either in groups or pairs, holding hands. Louis stays far enough behind Harry that he can’t hear what his clique is talking about, close enough to keep the top of Harry’s head in view. 

 

His chest is tight and he’s not sure what to do with his hands. He wants to go back to their dorm and hide. No one is going to believe this. Five seconds out of their room and it’s like he's not even here, like Harry has forgotten they’re supposed to be Matched. He doesn’t know any of these people. This is never going to work. 

 

He wants to cry again. He seems to be having that feeling a lot, lately. He’s always thought that the morning after Matching, he’d have a new life partner, someone to walk through the halls with when Liam was busy with cooler friends. He feels melodramatic, but he can’t help it. He  _ wants  _ to be melodramatic. 

 

When they reach the crowded lunchroom, passing several couples making out by the vending screens, Harry breaks away from his friends, waving them forward. The smile on his face is tight, and when he turns to Louis, he’s licking his lips nervously and tugging on his belt loops with his thumbs. 

 

“Hey,” he says. “You can sit with us if you want? I know you—I know you have other friends. I don’t want—” 

 

“Lou!” 

 

Louis turns around and sees Liam pushing against the flow of students, hurrying out of the lunchroom to come toward them. 

 

He’s glowing, and Louis’s stomach drops sickeningly. It’s not fair. It’s not fair, it’s not. He knows he should be happy for Liam, he’s his best mate, but—it’s not  _ fair.  _

 

Liam glances at Harry, and his smile falters for a second. “Harry, mate. Where’s Nick?” 

 

For a moment, Louis feels sorry for Harry—unless he makes some big public announcement (which wouldn’t be un-Harry-like), he’s going to be answering that question hundreds of times. Harry smacks Liam on the shoulder, and Liam smacks him back, and Louis stares. He hadn’t realized they were friends. 

 

“Hey, Leeymo,” Harry says. “Actually, I was, uh, I was Matched with Louis.” 

 

Liam stares at Louis. There’s an uncomfortable pause as Louis tries his best to smile, and then Liam says, “Uh, what? But—but what about Nick?”

 

“Me and Nick broke up,” says Harry, as if he and Nick weren’t attached at the hips. He reaches over and puts his big, warm hand on Louis’s shoulder, squeezing. The question is etched into his eyebrows, and Louis mentally shakes himself. 

 

“I’ll, uh, find you after lunch?” It sounds awkward. This isn’t going to work. Liam is giving him that look, the one he does when Louis says he slept instead of sneaking out to watch the meteor shower, or when he says he ate dinner instead of getting caught up watching the rats in the Biology lab. 

 

Harry gives him a relieved smile and another squeeze, and then he takes his hand away and says, “Catch you later,” and jogs off into the crowded cafeteria. 

 

This is never going to work.


	3. what's in a name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for your lovely comments! I think there's a lot that can be done with the whole soulmates plot besides the obvious, and I love getting to explore that. 
> 
> I apologize in advance for all the Ziam in this chapter...I just really love Ziam.

“Look, mate, Harry’s cute, right?” says Liam, looking at Louis with wide eyes across their lunch table. “And he’s really smart. Isn’t he, like, top of our class?” 

 

_ Louis  _ is top of their class, and he’s about to say so when he gets interrupted by Liam’s Match, a dark-haired guy named Zayn with a lot of tattoos. “At least he’ll be good at sex,” says Zayn, arching one eyebrow across the table at Louis. “Would you like to see the porn? I’ve got a copy.”

 

“Zayn!” says Liam, aghast. Zayn just shrugs. 

 

“Everyone bought it when they were selling it, Li,” he says. Louis decides that Zayn is a bit of a dick, and he doesn’t like him. Liam deserves better than someone who would buy self-made porn that Harry sold for a bit of cash. 

 

“I don’t want it, thanks,” he says, coldly, and Zayn shrugs again, leaning over to steal Liam’s milk carton off his lunch tray. 

 

“Hey,” says Liam, momentarily distracted. “Give that back.” There’s no real irritation in his voice, though, and when he reaches up to grab the milk carton back, Louis can see the  _ Malik  _ inked onto his wrist. 

 

“You weren’t even drinking it,” says Zayn, letting go of the carton with a bit of a pout on his pretty face. Liam wraps one of his arms around Zayn’s shoulders and presses his mouth to his hair, and then he stays like that, watching the lunch room over the top of Zayn’s head. Louis tries to fight the jealousy welling up inside him, but he can’t. 

 

Zayn is exactly the type of match Liam wanted. In fact, he  _ is  _ the Match Liam wanted—Louis’ had to listen to years of Liam gushing about the pretty boy in his art class. Liam has a fatal weakness for the whole “bad boy” thing Zayn has going on, and Louis is sure that Liam is exactly the kind of Match that Zayn wanted, too, and that’s why they’re Matches. 

 

Louis looks down at his lunch. He isn’t hungry, but he needs to eat or his body won’t have any energy, so he picks up his sandwich in his fingertips and takes a small bite. He’s already cut off the crusts. Liam and Zayn accepted his story about Harry pretty readily, after they got over the shock that he’d broken up with Nick. (“Nick thought he was better than everyone, anyway,” Liam had said, and Zayn had agreed, “Yeah, it’s just like him to pull some shit like this.”) But Louis thinks it’s mostly because they’re so wrapped up in each other. Everyone’s wrapped up in each other. 

 

It’ll get around, though. People will start to talk about it. Harry is  _ popular,  _ that’s the thing. People will figure out that he and Louis aren’t working out, and there will probably be rumors about it. They’re not even sitting together. Everyone else is sitting with their Match. 

 

Eventually, Louis just can’t take it anymore, watching the sickening look that Zayn keeps giving Liam when he thinks no one is looking. An expression like that should not be on the face of Zayn Malik, who once got in a fistfight so bad he had to go to Intensive Care. This whole Matching business has royally fucked with everyone’s heads, and he refuses to admit that he wants to be part of it, even though he does—he does.

 

“You leaving?” says Liam, when Louis grabs an apple and stands up. Louis nods. 

 

Zayn just jerks his chin in a lazy goodbye. Louis forces a smile for Liam’s sake and wiggles out of the cafeteria table, past some of Liam’s friends. He takes a bite out of his apple as he walks down the middle of the cafeteria. 

 

He sees the top of Harry’s head at a table and his first instinct is to hurry past, but then he sees that Harry has his arm around one of his friends, Niall, who is hunched over the table, shoulders shaking. Louis frowns. Niall was in his waiting room last night. Is he crying? Did he get Matched with the wrong person? That happens. Something twinges in Louis’s heart—he had the worst Matching night, he should be the one crying.

 

Harry doesn’t look up from where he’s talking into Niall’s ear, so Louis hurries up once he’s past the table, without stopping. 

 

* * *

 

The next day is a class day, and Louis learns three new things about Harry: 

 

One: he sings in the shower. Sings well, even though it’s not music Louis has ever heard before. He thinks maybe Harry writes it himself since he keeps going back and humming and replacing the lyrics. He’s good. He’s really good. 

 

Two: he curls his hair. That’s what the metal rod on the vanity was for. Louis has to force himself not to watch, even though he’s kind of fascinated. Harry goes from fluffy-blow-dried hair to neat, curled-ends hair in the fifteen minutes it takes Louis to shower. 

 

Three: he drinks two cups of coffee in the same time frame. A caffeine addict, Louis decides, remembering the chocolate stash he found inside the vanity’s drawer yesterday, when he was looking for a toothpick. 

 

They get ready in silence. Harry manages a smile every time they make eye contact, but Louis tries to avoid those moments. He packs his bag, mostly just his tablet and his tablet’s charging chip, because he doesn’t like to carry around textbooks when he can just download them. When he’s done, he hesitates by the door. He and Harry have first period together. It’s Studies of Past Civilizations, and they’re on their last unit (the downfall of the United States of America). He and Harry are Matched now—shouldn’t they walk to class together? 

 

“You can go ahead,” says Harry, with a quick smile. He bends over his own bookbag, which is made of some silvery material with pink and blue stars glittering on the front. “I have to find my pencil case.” 

 

Louis thinks he catches sight of Harry’s pencil case at the top of his bookbag, but he just nods and leaves. 

* * *

  
  


Louis doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, he really doesn’t, but Liam and his group of popular friends are sitting at the desks right behind him in Past Civs and he can hear Sophia Smith loud and clear.    
  
“Zayn?” Sophia’s saying, as Louis clicks on the news feed on his table and starts scrolling, trying not to listen. “He’s so hot!”   
  


“Um, Sophia?” says one of the others. “That’s Liam’s Match you’re talking about.” 

 

“Oh, please,” says Sophia. “Liam knows he’s hot. We all know he’s hot. What was your score, Liam?”   
  


Louis’s finger pauses its scrolling. That’s a rude question, and he has half a mind to turn around and tell Sophia so. Compatibility cores are personal, and even though people share them all the time, you’re not supposed to ask. He refuses to admit that he’s kind of curious.    
  
Liam laughs awkwardly. “Uh, it was sixty-eight.”   
  


His friends fall silent. Up at the front of the room, the professor pulls up the lesson, and even though he’s staring right at the screen, Louis barely registers it. Sixty-eight? Liam and Zayn, sixty-eight percent compatible?    
  
“Oh, well,” says one of the girls. “That’s pretty good.”    
  
It  _ is _ okay—it’s a lot better than nineteen percent—but seventy is usually considered the cutoff for guaranteed successful couples. Of course nothing is guaranteed, not even Harry and Nick apparently, but there are stats, evidence. Eighties are good scores and nineties are great scores. Lots of Matches fall into the high nineties. Louis wouldn’t have guessed that Liam and Zayn were anything lower than ninety-five, himself.    
  


“I like him a lot,” says Liam, with another self-conscious laugh. “I know it’s going to work out.”    
  
Louis takes in the lesson on the screen, scanning over the header (World War IV) and then snags on Harry, sitting in the front row. It’s assigned seating, so they don’t have to sit together, but he can see from here that Harry has a third cup of coffee at his desk.    
  
Everything still hurts, but he hopes that it does work out for Liam, at least. Since it can’t work out for him.    
  


* * *

  
At lunchtime, tired of the constant questioning and shocked looks, Louis borrows one of Zayn’s black armbands and puts it on over the  _ Styles _ written on his wrist. Most people have heard by now that Nick got Rejected and that—obviously—this means he and Harry are no longer together. But they still keep asking Louis to explain why, and he can’t, and he doesn’t like all the attention. It makes him stumble over his words and drop his pencils and lose his train of thought.

 

Last period, a girl backed him into a corner and demanded to know his compatibility score, and he had to blurt out their fake one—ninety one. Louis would really prefer not to lie, so now he just wants to cover it up. 

 

He sees Harry later in Logistical Theory and feels a twinge of guilt when Harry glances at his wrist. But by the end of his class, Harry has his watch switched to his other wrist so he can cover up his  _ Tomlinson, _ too.   
  


  
The thing is, Louis doesn’t know the answers to anybody’s questions, and the other thing is, he wants to know.    
  
To put it nicely: what the fuck, Nick? 

 

Louis chews on one of his nails as he walks back to their dorm room, trying to imagine being Nick. He’s never had to break up with anybody before, so that part alone is foreign enough, but it’s not as though he can’t understand the concept. Of course people break up. He just doesn’t understand why anyone would wait until the night of the Matching to do it. 

 

He guesses maybe Nick just got scared, but still, it doesn’t make any sense.

 

He reaches their dorm room, which has their last names written on it in fancy script ( _ Styles & Tomlinson,  _ as if they’re married) and shoulders open the door, already sliding his bookbag off. 

 

He only has to glance into the room to see Harry balled up on the bed, rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees. He’s sobbing. Louis stares at him for a moment, his hand stuck to the door, and then quickly leaves, shutting the door. 

 

Guilt settles in his throat, and he can’t swallow it back, even though this is in no way his fault. He’ll study in the library. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if you notice any typos or anything in this chapter so I can fix them, I get super embarrassed about that stuff. Also, is the universe confusing, or does it make sense so far? World-building is not my strength, haha.


	4. one small step for man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update today because I have freeee time :)
> 
> Sooo I changed the number of chapters because I decided to combine some of them, but it's a bit hesitant still. End result is around 50k words, give or take, so it won't change too much. 
> 
> Apologies in advance for Louis being a Dick... I promise I love him and Zayn also, lol.

Harry is a terrible roommate. 

 

First of all, he talks in his sleep. Louis’ old roommate snored, but he wasn’t as bad as Harry, who wakes Louis up with his senseless babbling and tosses in his sleep and soaks the sheets through with sweat. 

 

Second of all, he has a lot of stuff, and it’s always a mess on top of the vanity. Louis isn’t the neatest person himself, but then again he doesn’t own fifteen pairs of shoes. 

 

Third of all, he always hangs out in their room after class. Louis doesn’t want to walk in on Harry crying again, but that means that he has to spend all his time in the library. When Louis does come into the room, Harry immediately leaves, which makes Louis frustrated and a little guilty. 

 

By the end of the first week, he decides that Harry is avoiding him. 

 

There’s no one to talk to about it. He can’t tell Liam. Liam still doesn’t know that their Match isn’t real, and besides, he’s always with Zayn. Even when Louis talks to Liam in class, he has a feeling that as soon as their conversation is over, Liam will go off and tell Zayn everything he says. He can’t exactly blame them. He would probably do the same if his Match didn’t hate him, but it still hurts. 

 

He feels replaced.

 

After his last class of the week, a private lab with the professor who teaches AstroPhysics, he goes to their room to get one of his textbooks. The net connection is bad, today, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to read on his tablet. He cracks open the door slowly. 

 

Harry bounds off the bed, turning his back to Louis. Louis steps inside the room hesitantly, closing the door behind himself, but Harry is already grabbing his coffee off the bedside table, wiping at his eyes, and turning back around. He doesn’t look at Louis, just ducks his head to stare at the floor. Louis lowers his bookbag to the ground. 

 

He doesn’t want Harry feel like he  _has_ to leave every time Louis so much as steps into the room, even though this crying  _ is  _ getting a little old, (he knows that Harry just went through a bad breakup, he knows, he knows), so he says shortly, “I’m just grabbing a book, you don’t have to leave.” 

 

Harry clears his throat, wiping his mouth. “It’s—it’s fine, I’ll just—” He makes to step around Louis, over a pile of clean clothes that, for some reason, he threw out of the closet this morning. He grabs the doorknob, and Louis sees the wristwatch hiding his inked name, and for some reason that makes him say it. 

 

“Have you been avoiding me on purpose?” 

 

Harry freezes, glances at Louis. His face is still as red and chapped as ever, and Louis has the intrusive thought that he needs chapstick, moisturizer, anything. “I, uh—” says Harry. “I’ve just been—I just thought you’d want, you know—space.” 

 

“Why would  _ I _ need space?” 

 

Harry’s mouth works noiselessly, and he drags the back of his hand across it again. “Because, uh—because you probably don’t want to be Matched with me at all?” 

 

It’s not a lie, but he’d still like somebody to walk to class with, somebody to do homework with once in a while, since everyone else does those things with their Matches now. “You don't have to ignore me.” 

 

Harry’s hand fidgets on the doorknob. He’s so close that Louis can smell the vanilla of his coffee, the faint strawberries of his shampoo. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...I mean…” He licks his lips. “I’m sorry, this has all been really hard for me and I know it’s hard for you too.” 

 

Louis doesn’t know what to say to that. Of course it’s hard. Louis doesn’t have a Match, and Harry doesn’t have his boyfriend, and there’s no way for either of them to make that better. Still, Louis can’t help wishing that...that Harry at least wanted to hang out with him, a little. 

 

“And,” says Harry, looking down at his coffee. “It’s not about you, it’s not that I don’t like you, because I do, a whole lot, but I just thought you wouldn’t want to put up with me since we’re not compatible, and stuff.” 

 

The stuff about Harry liking him is fake, empty, because they hardly even know each other and Louis doesn’t know why Harry feels like he has to lie about that. He’s not asking for them to be best friends overnight, he’d just like—he’d just like to be treated like another human being and not a nuisance. 

 

“Well,” says Louis. He still doesn’t know how to put it into words, this frustrated knot in his stomach, but luckily Harry just keeps talking. 

 

“And I know I’ve been a mess lately, and mate, you shouldn't have to deal with that. You don’t deserve this. You deserve to have—” His voice breaks, and Louis can see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, and he cuts him off because he doesn’t need to hear Harry say  _ “someone who will love you.”  _

 

“We can just be friends?” 

 

Harry licks his lips again and gives him a hesitant smile. “Okay,” he says. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry if I hog the shower in the mornings.” 

 

It’s completely out of the blue, and a total lie—he doesn’t hog the shower, although he does hog the bed. “It’s all right,” says Louis. “I’m sorry I, uh.” He can’t think of anything to apologize for, except Nick, but he feels like saying a mutual “sorry” is an important part of their truce. 

 

“Oh, no,” says Harry quickly, letting go of the doorknob and touching Louis’s upper arm. His hand is sweaty and the palm is rough, but Louis resists the urge to pull away. “You’ve been a great Match. I mean, uh, you’ve been a great, uh, person. Roommate. Yeah, roommate.”

 

Louis forces a smile. “Thanks,” he says, and then he does pull away, bending down to grab his bookbag. “I really was leaving. I mostly do my homework in the library.” 

 

“Oh,” says Harry, dropping his hand. “Oh, well, I guess I’ll just...I might take a nap.” 

 

Louis just nods, kneeling down as Harry stumbles back to the bed. He puts his textbook in his bookbag, along with a notebook in case the connection goes out entirely, and then stands up. Maybe things will be okay with Harry. Maybe now, Louis can ask him to sleep with his head at the bottom of the bed so he doesn’t wake him up. They might not be real Matches, but they can still be  _ livable.  _

 

* * *

 

 

That night is uncomfortably hot and Louis tosses around in the bed, all by himself. It’s late but Harry isn’t home yet, and Louis knows he’s probably out with all his cool, popular friends, maybe drinking away his problems. Without Harry mumbling, Louis should be able to get a good night’s sleep, but instead he lies awake, wondering where Harry is and when he’s coming home. 

 

He would never, ever admit to, but he sort of cries in the dark, unable to pretend any longer than he’s not imagining what it would be like to have a real Match. He just wants to stay up late talking about his life, exchange shy kisses and fall asleep with somebody. Now it’s like no one cares, least of all Harry. He knows he’s overreacting, but he just feels so exhausted from being sad and left out that he can’t logic himself out of his funk. 

 

In the morning, Harry’s body is a warm, comforting weight at his back, and he’s sprawled across the mattress, one foot hooked over Louis’s leg. Louis doesn’t let himself stay. 

 

He spends all of that Saturday in the library, studying for his AstroPhysics final exam even though it’s months away. Liam and Zayn come in sometime past lunch. 

 

“Hey, Louis,” says Liam, his arm tight around Zayn’s waist, like the picture perfect Match they are. “Mind if we join you?” 

 

Louis gives a fake smile and moves over his stuff to make room for them. Zayn sets his huge-ass portfolio down, taking up like half the table. He’s studying all this art crap. Louis feels tempted to tell Liam that Zayn will never be able to make money off that bullshit, but he resists. 

 

Liam hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s just painfully lucky and painfully oblivious to how unlucky Louis is.

 

“Art, huh?” he says, instead, eying the portfolio as Zayn starts taking a bunch of paintings out. Well, they’re pretty good, Louis can admit that, even if he doesn’t want to. Zayn’s still a prick, even if he’s talented. 

 

“Yeah,” says Zayn. Liam kisses his temple. Of course he does.  

 

“What do you want to do with that?” says Louis, trying not to sound accusatory. Liam’s smart, but he shouldn’t have to be the sole breadwinner of their family while Zayn dicks around  _ painting.  _

 

Zayn rolls his eyes. “Never been asked _that_ before,” he says sarcastically. “What are  _ you  _ studying, anyway?” 

 

Way to dodge the question, Louis thinks. “AstroPhysics.” 

 

“Louis wants to go into higher education with the Universal Space Association,” Liam explains. “After graduation.” 

 

“Oh, cool,” says Zayn, uninterested. He probably doesn’t even know what AstroPhysics is. That’s his own funeral, because the Universal Space Association is the future. The human race is killing Earth rather quickly, and when they start preparing for inevitable life on another planet, Louis is going to be right on the front line, working in big AstroPhysics labs.

 

At least, that’s always been the plan. 

 

Now that he doesn’t have a real Match, things are more complicated. There are post-grad academies (affectionally called “Rejects academies) where people who decline their Matches go to find new ones, and Louis will probably have to go live there until he gets Matched with someone who isn’t Harry. Those academies aren’t even real academies—there are no classes or anything, and spending time there is a big red flag on your resume. 

 

He’s not  _ required  _ to go to the Rejects academies, but if he doesn’t—if there’s no name tattooed into his skin—no higher education will accept him, much less the Universal Space Association. 

 

It’s unfair, Louis thinks seriously, very unfair. It’s a prejudice he never considered before, because before he always assumed he’d be Matched, but now that he’s the one facing it, it seems incredibly unfair. 

 

* * *

 

When he gets back to the room, Harry is naked. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that short? I feel like that was really short. I hope the daily updates are working okay! I'll try to keep up with them :)
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who has left kudos and especially those leaving comments. It means the world to me!


	5. a piece of cake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steaminess rating: one Rate-My-Professor chili

It takes them several fumbling minutes of apologies and acting like they hadn’t seen each other, with Harry hurriedly wrapping a towel around his waist and Louis trying to get past him without looking, and  _ looking.  _ He feels like his head is going to explode from the heartbeat pounding in his ears, from the heat in his cheeks. 

 

He knows it isn’t supposed to be a big deal, seeing your roommate naked. He’s even seen his old roommate naked a few times, but this feels different, because they’re  _ Matched  _ now, even though they agreed just to be friends. Louis takes a big breath. 

 

Friends. Friends who can see each other naked without making things awkward. 

 

Harry comes around him, sitting on the bed and rubbing the back of his neck. He’s dressed now, white t-shirt clinging to wet spots on his shoulders, and the skin above his collar is pink and scrubbed. Louis averts his eyes. It’s not supposed to be a big deal, it’s not, but he can’t unsee the way that Harry’s chest was pale-white beneath his tank-top tanlines, the way his stomach was soft and the hair there, under his belly button, and his thighs, and, 

 

and, 

 

and Louis needs to stop. Immediately. 

 

Harry clears his throat and Louis looks up, up at Harry’s flushed face and definitely not at the sharp collarbones peeking out of his shirt. 

 

“I was, uh, I was at Niall’s last night,” he says, pointing to the vanity, and Louis follows his finger and sees a half-eaten chocolate cake sitting there. “With some of my friends. He said I could have the rest of the cake. D’you wanna—I mean, you can have some, if you want.” 

 

“Thank you,” says Louis, who wonders where Niall got half a cake. 

 

Harry shifts on the bed. “We just needed a night to sit around and watch sad movies and cry,” he says, like it’s an apology. 

 

Louis isn’t sure what to say. Harry doesn’t have to apologize for coming home late. Louis definitely wasn’t crying in their bed. Definitely not...that’s Harry’s forte. 

 

“I asked Niall if he wanted to hang out and drown our sorrows in cake and bad movies again tonight, but he’s busy.” He looks at Louis with wide eyes, and Louis has the distinct feeling he’s about to be guilted into something. “Would you…?”

 

* * *

 

 

“What, uh, if you don’t mind me asking,” says Louis, once they’re sitting up in bed and Harry is picking a movie, while Louis marvels at the turn of events. (He’s in bed with his Match, planning to eat away their feelings about not being Matched right.) “What happened to Niall?”

 

Harry hovers the cursor over something called  _ Rough and Ready,  _ which looks like the borderline-porn that Zayn tried to torrent the other day, and says, “His fuckbuddy—er, his best friend—do you know Melissa Whitelaw?” 

 

Louis remembers Melissa now that Harry has said her name. There are so many people in the Station that he forgets to think about. “Think so,” he says. 

 

“Well, Niall’s been in love with her for years—” He swipes past  _ Rough and Ready _ — “and people were saying they’d be Matched, but Melissa set her preference to ‘girls only’ at the last second, and we’re pretty sure she did it just to avoid being Matched with him.” 

 

Louis feels a small pang of sympathy—he imagines he knows what  _ that  _ feels like, not having a proper Match. “Oh,” he says. “That sounds awful.” 

 

“I know,” says Harry, and then glances at Louis. He looks a bit less red now, although the skin around his mouth is still chapped. “Did you—was yours boys and girls, or—”

 

Louis nods. 

 

Harry nods back, looking at the screen again. Choosing both boys and girls as your preference is becoming increasingly common. Louis knows Liam did. 

 

“How about this?” Harry says, hovering the cursor over a movie called  _ Fiery Jealousy.  _ The cover is an image of a man’s torso, naked from chin to belly button, and written across his abs is a tagline that reads  _ “His muscles are strong, but their love is stronger.”  _

 

“Um,” says Louis, who can’t think of anything nice to say about this particular selection, so he just lets Harry click on it before asking, “Who did Niall get Matched with?” 

 

“Some girl named Zoe,” says Harry. “She’s kind of a snob. Their score’s in the fifties, which isn’t great, but Niall’s sort of hard to handle, so I guess there just wasn’t...anyone else.” He makes a face at the screen, which is loading. “The connection in here sucks.” 

 

“It’s the whole Station,” says Louis. “The library too.” He wonders if Harry has realized that there wasn’t anyone else for Louis to be Matched with, either. He wonders if Harry thinks much about him at all. 

 

The movie pops up and Harry hums a noise of consent, grabbing the cake and placing it between them, handing Louis a fork. Louis has to fight back a smile, in spite of himself—they’re just going to eat the cake like this? Just dig their forks into a whole half a cake? Harry gives him a goofy half-grin over the cake and scoops up just one of the frosted flowers off the top of the cake. 

 

About thirty minutes into the movie, Louis comes to the conclusion that Harry is not just a caffeine addict but a sugar addict, too. Somehow, he’s not really surprised. 

 

As the huge guy onscreen flexes in front of a horse, for some reason, Louis contemplates asking Harry why Nick got Rejected. It would be rude, since Harry is clearly still hurting about Nick, but Louis is really curious, and he’d also like to know the truth so he can deflect questions better. 

 

He watches as the muscular man and his love interest tumble into bed for a slow-motion sex scene, heavily edited and censored, with someone reading Shakespeare lyrics in the background. His mouth tastes overly-sweet from the cake, and he begins to think about going to brush his teeth. 

 

He decides not to ask about Nick tonight. It’s too soon.

 

The screen fades out and soon the man and woman are standing in a temple, saying their wedding vows. Harry pushes the cake away, down by their feet, making the sheets bunch up. Louis glances at the cake and then at Harry, but Harry is already ducking his head, so Louis is left staring at the top of his blonde head. He puts his face on Louis’s shoulder, against his neck. 

 

He leans there for a moment, and Louis doesn’t move, because he can hear the shaky breath Harry’s taking in, and he thinks that maybe Harry needs comfort. His hands fidget—he’s not sure what to do, no one’s ever come to him for physical comforting before, and Harry is still a stranger, and he’d really prefer it if Harry didn’t touch—

 

And then there’s wet against his neck, and he can feel Harry’s mouth, and his stomach jolts in surprise. Harry. Harry’s kissing him. Well, it feels like it’s more tongue than mouth, but Louis can’t move, can’t even fidget his hands. Can only think,  _ oh.  _

 

Harry’s head is heavy on his shoulder and his tongue drags down to the juncture where Louis’s neck meets his collarbone. It’s cold and wet, and Louis manages a breath. They probably shouldn't be doing this. They’ve already agreed to just stay friends, and they haven’t talked about this, and he’s never, he’s never done this before, with anybody. Harry’s tongue on his collarbone makes him feel shivery and weird, and it’s unpleasant, and he thinks he would like Harry to stop. 

 

So he sits up, moving away. Harry sits up, too, wiping at his mouth, and his eyes are wide. “I,” he says. “I’m sorry.” 

 

“It’s alright,” says Louis, even though it isn’t. What are they doing? Their Match is only nineteen percent compatible...trying to be in a real relationship is just going to end in misunderstanding, in hurt feelings. Numbers don’t lie. He doesn’t want to hurt Harry’s feelings, so he says, “Dunno why you just did that, though.” 

 

Harry has the decency to look ashamed, scrunching up his red cheeks and biting the side of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m so sorry. I just...I guess I’m just lonely.” 

 

Louis nods, trying to ignore the sinking in his stomach. Lonely. Harry misses Nick, misses kissing and cuddles and sharing movies and all the things that go into relationships, all the things that go into being Matches. He wants Louis to be the replacement body. It makes sense, sort of. It makes sense in Louis’s head, but the feeling of Harry’s mouth on his skin makes him feel dirty and unwanted, and he resists the urge to wipe it off. 

 

He just wants—he wants to be kissed because of  _ him _ . He wants somebody to kiss him because they love him, because they enjoy being around him and eating cake with him and because they want to embrace his warm body and feel safe with him. 

 

He wants. He wants. He takes another breath, trying to ease the tension out of his body. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Harry says again, rubbing at his eye and then swinging his legs clumsily off the bed, slipping a little on his socks as he tries to stand up. He has to put one big hand down on the bed. “D’you—still want the cake?” 

 

Louis shakes his head.  _ Please never kiss me again.  _

 

“Okay,” says Harry, picking up the half-eaten lump of cake and lumbering across the room to place it on the desk. “I’m gonna shower? So you can have it to yourself in the morning.” 

 

Louis nods again, relieved that he’ll get a few minutes to himself to relax from what just happened. Harry keeps his head down, doesn’t look at him again as he collects his pajamas and heads into the bathroom. Pops out again, grabs a bottle off the vanity, pops back in. 

 

Louis crawls into bed, pulling the blankets around himself. He closes his eyes. He can hear the music from the movie still playing, but he doesn’t want to go turn it off, doesn’t want to listen to the silence. The shower turns on, and a few moments later, Harry’s low voice comes crooning through the walls. Louis can’t make out any words, which is strangely soothing. It eases the dirty feeling crawling down his neck. 

 

This is all messed up. Louis tucks his knees up by his chest, hugging them. He just wants to have a real Match, someone who’ll kiss him and mean it. Someone who he can talk to. His eyes are hot, and he squeezes the pillow. He lets himself cry until he hears the shower turn off. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise things will get better....they have to be depressing first, but some good, much happier kisses are coming!


	6. an offer you can't refuse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Louis begins to be slightly less emotionally constipated, for the time being.

Louis wakes up alone in the bed, to the rumble of Harry’s coffee maker. He rolls onto his back, checking the clock. Class doesn’t start for another hour or so, but Louis tries (and often fails) to eat breakfast everyday, so he pushes the blankets off and wiggles out of bed. Harry is hunched over the vanity, doing his hair. He turns as Louis passes him on his way to the bathroom, and before Louis can shut the door and avoid him, he smiles and says, “Hey, Lou.” 

 

Harry sounds like he’s been awake for a while, so he’d had time to practice talking. Louis hasn’t, but he makes himself look around. Kicking at night, leaving the room a mess, crying all the time—Harry’s really wearing down on his patience. Why couldn’t he have been Matched with someone less annoying? He forces a smile anyway. “Hey.” 

 

Harry holds up a blue mug. “I made you a coffee? I wasn’t sure if you drink coffee, but I thought I’d try, so—” 

 

“Thanks,” says Louis. It’s obviously a peace offering, not Harry being nice out of the goodness of his heart, but he doesn’t know how to politely decline. He doesn’t particularly like the way coffee tastes, but Harry smiles hopefully up at him, so he takes a sip. It burns his tongue. 

 

“Do you want sugar?” asks Harry, reaching for a tin behind his curling iron. “And I have creamer too, I have hazelnut and vanilla. The vanilla is the best. If you want, you can tell me what you like, and I can start making it for you when I make my coffee. If you want.” He holds up the tin, and for a moment Louis thinks about leaning down and kissing him on the mouth. 

 

His throat tightens, raw from sleeping with his mouth open and from crying the night before. Harry isn’t his Match, he didn’t kiss Louis because he likes him and Louis didn’t even like the kiss. He shouldn't torture himself. “Thanks,” he says again, setting the mug down on the vanity. After an awkward pause, he realizes Harry isn’t going to pour the sugar for him, so he does it himself, pouring in more than he means to. 

 

He adds the vanilla too, because Harry was so insistent about it, and tastes it again. It does taste better this way, even though it’s still bitter. He smiles hesitantly at Harry. “Thanks, mate.” It seems like that’s all he’s ever going to say, for the rest of this trial period. 

 

Harry grins up at him, his teeth so straight and white that Louis glances down at them. There’s those dimples again, and it’s the first time Louis has seen Harry look happy, and the realization makes him feel dizzy. It’s too early in the morning for this, too early. 

 

“You can drink as much as you want,” Harry is saying, and Louis manages to nod before escaping into the bathroom, still with the coffee mug in his hand. He hopes things don’t get even more awkward. 

 

* * *

 

 

“So, like,” says Liam, when it’s just the two of them for a rare afternoon, sitting out in the courtyard and watching Zayn and his buddies play ball. “How far have you and Harry gone?” 

 

He turns his head to grin at Louis, so unsuspecting, perfectly expecting Louis to tell him about his great sex life with his great Match. Louis averts his eyes, thinking about Harry’s mouth on his neck last night. It’s probably best to be honest, in case people are going around asking Harry the same question. 

 

“We’ve done a bit of necking,” he says. 

 

“Oh, okay,” says Liam. “So you guys are going slow?” 

 

_ Slow  _ isn’t exactly the word Louis would use, but he just nods. “Yeah,” he says.

 

He’s relieved that Liam believes him, believes that he and Harry are happy Matches, because the rest of the academy is still talking about Nick, about the breakup of the Porn Duo. Louis got accosted by Niall’s Match, Zoe, in the halls today. Zoe  _ “just wanted some details”  _ about the breakup, details that of course Louis couldn’t give and wouldn’t have given, even if he had had them. Still, it had been difficult to get away from Zoe without being outright rude. 

 

“That’s kinda sweet, like,” says Liam, bumping his shoulder. “I bet Harry’ll be good in bed.”

 

Louis snorts before he can stop himself, and Liam gives him a weird look. Quickly, to cover up, Louis says, “Yeah, yeah. He is.” 

 

“Mmkay. Whatever you say, mate,” says Liam, leaning comfortably against the wall behind them, pulling at the grass. He watches Zayn jump to catch a ball, tumbling onto the ground as his friends swarm him. 

 

It reminds Louis of the time he sat out here on Matching day, back when he’d been curious to see who everyone got Matched with. Now he avoids couples in the halls, in the cafeteria. He’s taken to eating in the library again, because it’s quieter and he doesn’t have to see Zayn feed Liam, doesn’t have to see Harry laughing with all his friends. 

 

Louis doesn’t really want to know, but Liam probably only asked him so he can have an excuse to overshare about his own sex life, so he says, “How far’ve you been with Zayn?” 

 

Liam laughs, pretending to be embarrassed, but Louis can see him smiling. His heart squeezes, and he fists his hands in his lap. “Uh, pretty far,” he says, eyes following Zayn, his mouth curving up. “But we’re waiting until Highlights to go all the way, y’know?” 

 

The Highlights ceremony is still weeks away, right before graduation. During the ceremony, all the couples are bathed in some kind of holy water—Louis doesn’t understand the religion behind all of it. Most people don’t care about the ceremony, anyway. They care because Highlights is considered “fuck night” for the couples who don’t jump into it on Matching night. The sex isn’t mandatory but it’s “highly encouraged.” 

 

Of course, things are different for Louis. He’ll either have to wait until the Rejects academy to have sex, or do it with Harry, which sounds horrifying but, in a way, a little interesting. Would Harry want to record it? Would anyone buy porn now that having sex isn’t against the rules? Maybe Zayn would buy it. 

 

“Ah,” he says, to Liam. “Seems like that’s a popular decision.” 

 

Liam raises his eyebrows. “We’re not just doing it because it’s popular. It’s important to Zayn. He’s really spiritual.” 

 

From the middle of the courtyard, Zayn gives another guy a rude hand gesture. He doesn’t look very spiritual, at least not at the moment, but Louis resists the urge to roll his eyes. He doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he falls silent, letting Liam go on watching Zayn. It’s all Liam’s interested in, anyway. Not that Louis can blame him, it's just—it sucks.

 

* * *

 

Every morning for the next week, Harry makes Louis’s coffee for him. Once, there’s a small wrapped chocolate with it. He always gives it to Louis with a big smile on his face (once while Louis is still in bed) and those are the only times that he smiles like that, and it makes Louis feel confused and funny inside.  He can’t figure Harry out. Harry always seemed easy to read, the guy with the boyfriend who was a little too sexually enthusiastic, but now he’s enthusiastic about serving Louis coffee, and it’s weird. It’s really weird.

 

* * *

 

The week after, Louis figures out why Harry has been so eager to get on his good side. 

 

It’s a Tuesday, and Louis’s working on his flashcards in the middle of their dorm floor. The library is crowded and loud, and Harry has stopped sobbing during the day (although Louis can hear him crying before they sleep sometimes), so it’s okay to study in here again. 

 

Even though Harry’s supposed to be smart, near the top of their class, Louis has never once seen him in the library. Now he knows why: Harry does all of his work in bed, wrapped in blankets, usually with a few cups of coffee. 

 

It’s weird to know something so personal about someone he isn’t exactly friends with, but he’s used to that by now. He knows the color of Harry’s toothbrush, and the way he looks wearing pajamas (usually just oversized t-shirts), and what he looks like naked because of the time he walked in on Harry getting out of the shower, and, yeah. 

 

Half of their academy knows what Harry looks like naked, anyway, so Louis tries not to dwell on it. 

 

“Hey, Lou,” says Harry, popping his head over the side of the bed. Louis jumps, his highlighter skidding across the card, making a long pink line. Harry likes to call him Lou. No one's ever really given him a nickname like that before.

 

“Yeah?” he says, trying not to sound startled. 

 

“Will you come to my show on Saturday?” 

 

Louis puts his highlighter down. “Your show?” he repeats. Too late, he remembers that Harry is part of the Performing Arts program. He definitely should have known that. 

 

“Yeah,” says Harry. A loose curl falls over his eyes. “I have a solo in the second act.” 

 

Louis wonders why in the world Harry is inviting him personally. Sure, they’re on decent terms, they talk occasionally about the temperature in the room or mutual acquaintances, and they share a bed, but they’re not best friends. He guesses Harry is just being nice. Maybe he invites everyone personally. “Think I’ll be able to make it,” he says. “I don’t have anything else going on.” 

 

Harry grins, his dimples deepening. “Sweet, sweet. Because I actually have another favor to ask.” 

 

Louis blinks. “Excuse me?”  _ Another  _ favor? 

 

“Yeah,” says Harry, and he starts talking faster, which Louis has noticed he does when he’s nervous, even though he’s still got that big smile plastered on his face. “So, after the show we always have this after-party, and since this is our last show, it’s kind of a big deal, and since it’s right after Matching everyone is going to have their Match, and I kinda have to have a plus one and I was hoping you would come with me because all of my friends from Performing Arts are kinda under the impression that we’re ninety-one percent compatible and I don’t know exactly how that happened—” A quick breath, less of a smile now— “but it did and I have to show up with you so will you please please come?” 

 

It’s the most words Louis’s ever heard anyone say directly to him all at once and it takes him a second to process. Harry is asking him to go to a party. With him. As his Match. “Er,” he says. Is he allowed to say no? “I’ve never actually—I’ve sort of never been to a party.” 

 

“You don’t  _ have _ to come,” says Harry quickly. “I can say you’re sick or, or something. But then you need to act sick. Or, or. I mean, everyone is expecting—all my friends think—they all want to meet you.” 

 

Louis’s stomach squirms. No one has ever wanted to meet him before. How many friends does Harry have? A lot, he thinks. And they all want to meet him. They’ll all smile at him, give him illegal alcohol, invite him to join them and he’ll finally be part of the in-crowd _ ,  _ instead of on the outskirts of everything. 

 

He has to remind himself that he’s not really Harry’s Match, that they don’t really have ninety-one percent compatibility. And he’s never been to a party. He probably won’t have anything to say, he’ll probably stand in the corner gripping a glass of illegal alcohol, calculating how many times he can go to the bathroom in an hour. But still, still. A party. 

 

“Alright,” he says. 

 

Harry grins again, relieved. “Really? Thank you so much, thank you so much. Thank you. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” 

 

“You don’t have to,” says Louis, wondering what Harry would do to make it up to him. More chocolate? Shoot him some private porn? Invite him to sit at his lunch table? “I’m fine with going. I won’t know anybody there, though.” 

 

“I know,” says Harry. “I’m really sorry. I know it’s awkward. I know you probably wish we were never Matched, and I’m sorry, you deserve someone else.” 

 

He pinches his mouth shut after he says it, squinching up his eyes like he’s sorry he said it, and Louis is sorry he said it too. He doesn’t like to be reminded that he wasn’t likable enough to be compatible with anyone. 

 

Quickly, he says, “How late will it go? Can I leave early if I want to?” 

 

“Yeah, yeah,” says Harry. “ Anything you wanna do, mate. All you have to do is show up and maybe pose for a couple pictures and—” He bites the corner of his mouth, looking at Louis. 

 

“What?” says Louis, once it’s clear Harry’s not going to go on. Sometimes Harry talks so fast that Louis can’t even to think quickly enough to interrupt, but other times he leaves big silences, like he’s anxious not to be the only one in the conversation. 

 

“Some of my friends have been asking why we don’t hang out too much,” says Harry, nervously, “and I’ve just been pulling the whole, you know, ‘ _ we have separate friends, we have separate lives, we’re taking this relationship slow _ ’ thing. They’ve been buying it because of, well, you know…” 

 

Louis does know. He’s a little tempted to tell Harry how often people ask him about Nick. “Don’t you think that it’s not exactly believable that we’re ninety-one percent compatible?” 

 

Because, come on. There’s no way Harry hasn’t noticed that they have nothing in common. 

 

Harry furrows his eyebrows. “But, but,” he says, “we used to be friends, remember? In Year 11? We were childhood friends.” 

 

That’s a stretch, and they both know it. Harry hung out with him for a while, and Louis remembers one specific time when he gave Louis the starry eyes when Louis was explaining something about lightyears, but it was so long ago that he’s sure no one remembers. 

 

Frankly, the fact that Harry remembers surprises Louis, because he hasn’t brought it up in the whole time they’ve been living here together. He wants to ask more, wants to know what exactly Harry remembers, but it’s off topic and there will be another time. They live together, after all. 

 

“Okay,” he says. “S’pose we can say that.” 

 

“I’ve already said that,” says Harry, and now he looks embarrassed, his cheeks pinker than usual, his eyes darting away. “I told my friends about the, ah, the pre-teen crush I had on you. But we. We don’t need to talk about that.” 

 

“Wait,” says Louis. “What?” Pre-teen crush? 

 

“It’s nothing,” says Harry. “Anyway! I know you’re probably tired of getting all these questions, about our Match, and I am, too, since it’s awkward trying to answer them when I have no idea how  _ you’re  _ answering them and maybe we should be communicating better about all of that, but like, when we’re at the party, try to act like, just let’s try to act like we’re a couple? A bit? We could hold hands or something, if you’re okay with it, just to show everybody that you don’t hate me?” 

 

Louis is still trying to get past the fact that Harry told his friends he had a pre-teen crush on Louis. “I don’t hate you,” he says. 

 

“I know, I know,” says Harry hastily, in a voice that says he doesn’t. “But they think, since they never see you hanging out with me, they think you’re too smart for me, they think I annoy you.” A pause. “And I’m sure I do, I  _ know  _ I do, but could we maybe pretend to be a little bit in love? Just for this one night,  _ please,  _ it will get them off your back.” 

 

“I dunno if I know how to pretend to be in love with somebody,” says Louis, thinking that maybe this plan is getting a little out of hand. 

 

Harry sits up on the bed, so Louis has to lift his chin to watch him. He’s looking in the mirror across the room, making a face at himself. Holding hands with him doesn’t seem impossible, but the ways that people look at their Matches, all affectionate smiles and rosy blushes—he’s not sure he can fake that. 

 

“We can just,” says Harry, scrunching his nose up, “try our best. Okay? I’ll do all the talking.”

 

“Fine,” says Louis. It’s not the first time he’s been surprised into doing something with Harry—there was the time they watched  _ Fiery Jealousy,  _ the time Harry offered to help quiz him for Past Civs, and the time Harry asked him to hold his curling iron in his hair for a second. It’s like he can’t tell what Harry is thinking until he’s talking. He doesn’t hate it—actually it’s kind of nice, sometimes, the way Harry asks him to do things, the way Harry initiates their interactions, vulnerable at moments when Louis is the only one around. 

 

He can’t imagine what the party will be like, but it will be interesting to see, at least. Maybe he'll even enjoy himself. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I've been loving your comments! They're so motivational. Hope y'all liked this chapter and are excited to see Lou and Haz try to navigate a party together :)


	7. all the world's a stage

Louis sits near the front of the theater, reading the playbill carefully. He’s been to a couple of shows here before, mostly with Liam, and he’s enjoyed them even though he doesn’t always understand them. He remembers seeing Harry onstage but never Nick, and he wonders if Nick was part of Performing Arts too. 

 

What kinds of things did Nick and Harry even have in common? Besides the fact that they both apparently needed extra cash?

 

The theater is filling up around him, the loud chatter rising as more students clamber into the seats behind him. No one sits in the rows in front of Louis except for a couple of professors, and he wonders if there’s something wrong with the front seats. Maybe he should move, but he’s already here, now, staring up at the rich red curtain and waiting for the show to start. 

 

He invited Liam, but he had apologized, saying he had to help set up Zayn’s art exhibit. For once, Louis isn’t even annoyed at Zayn for stealing his best friend. He’ll be with Harry afterwards, anyway, and they’re going to hold hands. Louis’s brought flowers and everything, for after the show—it was Zayn’s idea, and even though he’s a prick, Zayn seems sort of romantic so here Louis is, with roses. 

The lights start to dim and the people hush around him—someone laughs loudly and someone else shushes him equally loudly. A girl comes onstage, her face painted in whites and blacks and reds, and announces the start of the show.

 

Louis follows along in the playbill, comparing each character’s entrance to the actor’s name listed on the page. Harry, who plays someone called  _ Soldier Number 1,  _ doesn’t come on until scene two, wearing camo and boots and a hat that makes his hair look like everybody else’s hair.

 

He expects Harry to be different onstage, to be dramatically flamboyant and ridiculously confident and smooth and funny, but he isn’t. He’s the same, and it enchants Louis, seeing someone he knows appear on a stage, as part of a story. 

 

Harry sings with the other soldier characters and it’s the same voice he hears in the shower, deep and Elvis-like and sometimes off-tune, dancing with the same too-long-limbed awkwardness that he has when he moves around their dorm room. When the song ends and the soldiers banter between them, the lines obviously practiced, Harry is the same, a little quirky, pretending to whine while he’s still smiling, like he can’t quite give over to the role completely. He still ducks his head while he’s speaking and still hovers behind the other characters, like he’s aware that his body is too big for him.

 

It’s like Louis could walk onstage and Harry would just go,  _ “Hey, Lou”  _ without missing a beat and it’s fascinating, like watching a bit of Harry’s life play out in front of him. 

 

The show isn’t all about Harry, of course, but he’s the only actor Louis really knows and so to him, Harry is the main character, especially during his solo at the beginning of the second act. The other soldiers are onstage, dancing a number behind him, but Harry is the only one singing. It’s a silly little song, not deep and sad like some of the others, but there are moments when Louis realizes that Harry’s voice is bigger than the shower in their dorm. 

 

It ends with the whole cast bowing at the front of the stage, and Harry is grinning as they all stand and lift their joined hands in the air, the same big smile he gives Louis when he makes him coffee. 

 

* * *

 

 

“Right back here,” says a boy with dark eyeliner who Louis doesn’t know, pointing behind him into a crowded room with a couple of cracked mirrors and kids in costume running around. “He’s probably changing.”

 

“Thank you,” says Louis, trying to smile at him, but the boy has already walked by, leaving Louis clutching his bouquet of flowers and facing the backstage costume room. He doesn’t see Harry, so he ventures a little farther, trying to smile at everyone who looks at him. He recognizes some people from class, and Zoe even says hi to him. 

 

He’s taken off his bracelet for the night and even though he’s holding the bouquet, he’s hyper-aware of the name on his wrist, aware of everyone else’s wrists. There’s a couple kissing in front of a bin of fluffy skirts, another couple getting changed out of their costumes near one of the mirrors, laughing. It’s loud back here. Everyone’s talking at once. 

 

He pauses to let a girl wearing a big skirt squeeze past him, talking into her tablet, and then he spots Harry, a broad-shouldered body wearing a camo uniform. The flowers are a bit crushed now, but Louis straightens them out, waving with the hand that has Harry’s name inked on it, and when Harry catches his eye, his face lights up and Louis’s pulse quickens in his throat. 

 

Harry steps over a bin of props, coming towards him, and Louis holds out the flowers—they’re pretending to be Matches now and he can’t help but feel a thrill, because he’s finally going to know what it’s like to be Matched for real, finally going to satisfy a deep craving that he hadn’t realized he had. “Hey,” he says. “I brought you—” 

 

It dies in his throat because Harry is looking at the flowers and doing something weird with his face, like he’s trying to force himself to keep smiling while his expression crumples, and then he’s pressing his sleeve to his eyes and looking away. Louis’s arms sag. What did he do wrong? Why’s Harry crying, why  _ now _ , he just performed well and his Match brought him flowers and oh, did Louis get the wrong flowers? 

 

He looks around quickly, but no, a girl is holding roses too and hugging her Match, laughing, and Louis’s stomach tightens and he has to look away. It feels perverted, like he’s peeping in on something that isn’t meant for him. He’s not Harry’s Match, not really. That’s why Harry is crying. Louis isn’t allowed to bring him flowers, probably. Harry loves Nick, and he and Louis aren’t even compatible, they’re definitely not in love and everything that Louis felt while watching Harry onstage suddenly feels dirty, shameful. 

 

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he starts, heat crawling up his neck as his hands start to tremble, “I didn’t mean—” 

 

“It’s okay!” says Harry, hard to hear in the too-loud room. He’s looking down at the flowers again, his eyes red and watering. He’s not sobbing or anything, but the moment is ruined. Louis wants to retreat, back outside to the theater where everything had felt funny and magical for a hour or so. 

 

“Did I get the wrong ones?” he asks. Maybe Nick used to bring him flowers. Louis tries to think of something else, tries to think about how the genus name for red roses is  _ Rosa  _ and the subgenus name is  _ Rosa,  _ too. Rosa Rosa. He tries not to think about how much Harry probably misses Nick, how much he wishes Louis was Nick, instead—

 

Harry laughs a little, pressing the back of his hand to his nose and sniffling. “I’m allergic to most flowers,” he says, and it takes a minute for that to sink in and then, oh. Oh. Louis feels like the world’s biggest idiot. He quickly pulls the bouquet behind his back. 

 

“Oh,” he says, and then stumbles on his words. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know. I just thought—Zayn said—he said it would be, like, the romantic thing to do.” Why had he tried to be romantic? He should have known that he would miss some piece of crucial information and mess up, somehow. 

 

Harry laughs again, wiping at his eyes. “No, I’m sorry, I should have told you.” He reaches out and his fingers brush Louis’s sleeve before he drops his arm again. “It was really sweet of you. Thank you. Here, we can...we can give them to somebody else.” 

 

Louis watches him turn to scan the room. He wants to say that part of the reason he brought the flowers was so people would see Harry with them and know that Louis is a romantic Match. It’s part of pretending to be in love, but he doesn’t want to sound like Harry doesn’t deserve the flowers just for performing well. He  _ does  _ deserve the flowers. It was sort of exciting to be the one who got to bring them to him. 

 

Except now Harry is saying, “I don’t think Niall got flowers,” and Louis has to look where he’s pointing to find Niall, who is leaning against a prop, near a girl who isn’t his Match.

 

“Guess we could give him these,” he says. “Since you can’t keep them, obviously.” They squeeze through the crowded room to get to Niall, but before they reach him, Harry puts his hand on Louis’s shoulder and leans down.

 

“Niall knows,” he says. “About our compatibility. You don’t have to mention it, though, he’s the only one I told.” He pulls away in time to sneeze into his arm, wincing, and Louis quickly holds the flowers out to the other side. 

 

“I feel bad, mate,” he says, but he’s not sure if Harry heard because someone laughs loudly next to them and Niall turns around, his face lighting up into a big grin. He pushes off the prop and hugs Harry, the top of his blonde head coming to rest right under Harry’s chin. 

 

“Mate!” says Niall, pounding him on the back and pulling away. “You killed it out there!” 

 

Louis remembers seeing Niall wearing a white curly wig onstage, playing some kind of old-timey senator. Harry grins and says, “You did amazing, too,” and then, “We brought you flowers.” 

 

Niall’s eyes get big and he looks at the bouquet in Louis’s hand. Smiles. “Aw, did Louis get these for you?” 

 

“Yes,” says Harry, laughing and then sneezing into his arm again. “Yes, ah—it was a surprise.” 

 

“I’ll say,” says Niall. Louis hands him the flowers, feeling shy in front of Niall, for some reason—he’s gotten used to Harry, but Niall is loud and laughs a lot and sometimes vapes in class and once he got caught with his hands up some girl’s skirt in the bathroom. 

 

“I thought you did well,” he says. “I mean, it was a realistic portrayal of pre-World War IV American politics.” 

 

Niall laughs, eyes sparkling. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

 

Louis feels stupid, so he just stands closer to Harry, and Niall quickly gets distracted by some girl spraying hairspray in his face. Harry shifts closer, too, to avoid the scuffle, and after a second Niall is back, breathless, wiping hairspray off his tongue. 

 

“You guys are cute,” he says, making a face as he drags his sleeve over his mouth. “Thanks for the flowers, mate. You’re coming to the afterparty, right?” 

 

He’s looking at Louis, not at Harry, so Louis nods. “Yeah, I, uh, I think.” He looks up at Harry for confirmation, and Harry nods, putting his hand on Louis’s elbow again. 

 

“I’m just gonna get changed and then we’re gonna head down,” says Harry. “We’ll see you there.” 

 

“Cheers,” says Niall, patting Harry on the middle of the chest as he tries to spit the hairspray out into his palm. Louis is glad when Harry leads him away, towards the back of the room where there’s another mirror and a small curtained area. 

 

“I’m gonna change and then fix my makeup,” Harry tells him, and Louis nods, looking at the dark makeup around Harry’s eyes. He stands there, fidgeting with his hands now that he doesn’t have the flowers to hold onto anymore, while Harry disappears into the curtained area with a small bag. It’s stupid, but he’s a bit excited about the afterparty. He hopes everyone believes the lie that they’re in love, even without the flowers. 

 

Harry comes out a minute later, wearing a glittery silver one-piece outfit that makes Louis stare. It clings to his hips in a way that should really be sinful, sliding off his shoulders and revealing a sharp collarbone, a hollow in the center of his throat, glitter sticking to the exposed skin. Louis has to swallow and remind himself that he isn’t attracted to Harry—although, is he really not attracted to Harry? When had he decided that? 

 

“Just a second,” says Harry, leaning in front of the mirror, “and then I promise we can go.” 

 

“It’s alright,” says Louis, watching him reach into his bag and pull out a makeup brush of some kind. He sits down in a chair next to Harry, tucking his feet under him, and watches Harry dust the brush across his cheekbones. Around them, the people slowly empty out of the room, on their way to wherever in the academy the afterparty is held. He’s about to ask Harry when Harry puts the brush away, zipping up the bag. 

 

“Ready!” says Harry. He has glitter on his cheeks now, too, tiny silver stars and dots, and Louis wants to touch. Wants to see if the stars will come away on his fingers. With his curly hair and silver outfit and the stars on his face, Harry looks like someone who belongs in the night sky, not like someone with chapped red skin and a flower allergy. 

 

Louis doesn’t know how to arrange his own expression, afraid he’s blushing, so he just nods and hurries towards the door, a little in front of Harry. 

 

Walking through the academy with Harry is odd because they usually only hang out when they’re both in the dorm room together, but it’s strangely comforting, to be with him in these halls that Louis walks everyday. He doesn’t have much to say, but suddenly Harry’s filling the silence with chatter about the show—nervous chatter, like he’s not sure if Louis wants to talk—and Louis is nodding along, a bit starstruck by this new Harry next to him and wondering if he can go back to seeing the same old mundane Harry in uniforms and bookbags. 

 

They arrive at the party a bit too soon. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I can't express how grateful I am for y'alls continued support! Would you read other Larry stories if I posted them after this one? What about Ziam?


	8. it's always coffee time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: very soft feels

Harry has his arm around Louis’s shoulders, hugging him into his side, and that’s how he introduces him to people.  _ “And you’ve met Louis, right? My Match,”  _ and  _ “This is Louis, my Match,”  _ first and foremost in conversations, and Louis has shaken so many hands and been hugged by so many people that he can’t remember any of their names, any of their faces. He’s dazed. 

 

The weight of Harry’s arm around him is comforting, and it makes Louis feel safe, knowing he’s not going to be left in the corner of this party all by himself. People are packed into the space, talking and laughing over the loud music, and he and Harry are wedged into the corner of a couch. Louis has the vague knowledge that they’ll have more room if he sits in Harry’s lap, and he’s keeping it in the back of his mind for later, maybe. 

 

Niall appears out of nowhere, holding a red plastic cup. He plunks himself down on the floor in front of the couch, looks up at Harry, and says, “Are you seriously drinking coffee right now?” 

 

“Stop!” says Harry. “I need it.” 

 

“Mate, it’s a party.” 

 

Harry clutches his mug of coffee against his mouth protectively. It makes Louis feel like giggling, but that’s probably just the cheap alcohol he’s been sipping out of his own cup, not enough to get him drunk but enough to make him feel warm inside, enough to make Harry seem cute and the random things people say seem funny. 

 

“Even Louis is more adventurous than you,” says Niall, lifting his cup to tap it against Louis’s. “Should’ve known you’d be a baller, mate.” 

 

Louis doesn’t know what  _ baller _ means, so he just smiles hesitantly at Niall and takes another sip, hoping it wasn’t something offensive. He likes it down here, in the basement of the academy. It’s supposed to be a game room, but Zayn told him it’s actually where people go to snort cocaine. He’s not sure if that’s true, but it’s cozier than he thought it would be. Maybe sometime he should ask Liam to come down here to investigate, at a time when there isn’t an afterparty in the space. 

 

Thinking about Liam and Zayn makes his stomach tighten with that jealous feeling, so he stops. He’s here, now, with Harry and Harry’s loud friends, and he’s surprised by how much he doesn’t hate it. By how much he likes it, actually, being at a party, being introduced to people as Harry’s other half, his partner. 

 

Of course, someone has already asked them if they’ve shot any porn together, but Harry didn’t cry about it and Louis considers that progress. 

 

Harry and Niall start talking about Niall’s Match, Zoe, who didn’t show up to the afterparty. Niall doesn’t seem upset about it, and Louis watches him with his open, honest baby face, watches him take big gulps of alcohol. Does Niall really not care? Maybe some people don’t. Maybe some people don’t even need Matches. 

 

Part of Louis wishes he was like that, but another part can’t imagine living alone, missing out on the deep connection that everyone else has with their Matches. 

 

“Do you think you and Zoe will just decline your Match?” asks Harry, and Louis’s eyes are dragged back over to him, to the glitter sparkling on his collarbone. He’s pretty in this light, and Louis makes himself take another drink. 

 

“Yeah,” says Niall, looking back at them, a fierce sort of positivity on his face. “We’ve already talked about it. We’re not the right people for each other. It’s okay, I don’t have big plans, I can spend years in Rejects if that’s what it’s gonna take.” 

 

Louis can’t help himself—he looks back at Harry, at the curved line of his upturned nose, at the way he’s holding his coffee mug in both hands. They haven’t talk about it. They haven’t had the talk where Louis says,  _ “So what are we going to do at the end of the trial period?”  _ and Harry says,  _ “I think we should just decline the Match, we’re not the right people for each other”  _ and then they’ll start preparing to enter Rejects after they graduate. 

 

Except that Louis does have big plans, he can’t be spending years in the Rejects’ academies. He’ll never get into the Universal Space Association if he does that. As he clutches his plastic cup of alcohol to his chest, he thinks that they can wait to have that conversation. They can wait forever, in his opinion. 

 

He doesn’t like thinking about this, it makes his insides feel all tight and it makes looking at Harry difficult. He takes another sip, and then Niall is clambering to his feet, draining the rest of his drink and dropping the empty cup into Harry’s lap. “I’m gonna dance,” he says. “Wanna come?” 

 

“In a minute, maybe,” says Harry, and Niall scampers off, wiggling his way into the crush of people dancing. Only moments later, a few girls come to fill his spot on the floor. They coo over how cute Harry looks and say hi to Louis and then clump together on the rug, talking about Matches and the professor who threatened to fail everyone on the World Religions final. 

 

Harry sets the coffee mug on his thigh, and then changes his mind and lifts it towards Louis. “Do you want any?” he asks. “Are you tired? You’re quiet.”

 

Louis shakes his head. Not tired—just listening. He’s curious about these people, what kinds of lives they live, what happens at a party. “I’m alright,” he says. But he holds his hand out, and Harry lets him have the mug, watches as Louis takes a sip out of it. It’s pleasantly warm still, sweet and milky. Better than the alcohol. Maybe Harry needs it to stay awake, or maybe he just likes the way it tastes, the warm feeling it leaves in Louis’s throat. 

 

“If you want to leave,” says Harry, taking the coffee back and cradling it in his hands, “you can.” But his eyes say he doesn’t want Louis to.

 

Louis doesn’t want to, either. It’s like a little piece of a life he missed out on, living in the library, walking past faces in the hallways and forgetting them immediately. “I think I’ll stay,” he says. “I’m not tired yet.” 

 

“Okay,” says Harry. “Should we…” He puts one hand on his thigh, palm up, so Louis can see the chapped skin in the dim light. He realizes that Harry is asking to hold his hand, and it gives him a thrill up his back, even though he reminds himself that it’s probably for the benefit of the girls sitting right there. 

 

He nods, pulling his own hand out from between them and putting it palm down on Harry’s, lacing their fingers together. He’s never held anyone’s hand before. Harry’s is warm and rough and a little sweaty, but it’s nice. It feels like Harry is securing him. 

 

Harry frowns down at their hands and flips them over, pulling his own hand off. Louis’s confused for a second, staring down at his own hand, before he realizes that Harry felt the burn scars on his palm. Harry looks up at him with the question on his face. 

 

“We exploded this compound in the chem lab a few months ago,” he explains. “It went all over my hands.” 

 

And Harry’s smile when he re-entwines their fingers, reassuring and soft, is enough to make Louis’s heart do a funny thing. 

 

* * *

 

 

Louis gets sleepy after another hour or so, and they leave together, hand in hand. 

 

It only makes sense to keep holding hands on the way back to their dorm room, because Louis likes the rough slide of their palms against each other, the feeling of sweaty fingers gripping his own. Harry still has his coffee mug, but it’s empty, and he starts humming softly as they walk the empty hallways.

 

Louis doesn’t recognize the song, but it doesn’t matter. He still feels warm from the alcohol, and sleepy, and he’s looking forward to getting in bed. 

 

He vaguely remembers Harry helping him find his pajama shirt, helping him pull it on, before everything is fuzzy. 

 

* * *

 

Louis wakes up buried under blankets, too hot, and when he pushes them off with a muffled grumble into his pillow, he feels the solid weight of Harry’s arm slung across his body. He keeps his face pressed into the pillow, breathing, staying still in case he wakes Harry up. 

 

It’s not the first time he’s woken up tangled with Harry in some way—earlier in the week he woke up with his legs on top of Harry’s, and last weekend Harry had turned himself upside down in the night, clinging to Louis’s ankles. But this is the first time Harry’s been full-on spooning him, and it makes Louis’s body even hotter, the press of Harry’s stomach to his back. 

 

He lifts his head out of the pillow, just a little, looking down blearily at Harry’s arm. His hand is dangling over Louis’s side, fingertips brushing the sheets. He has nice fingernails, Louis thinks, still half-asleep. They had a nice time last night. He thinks that maybe he’d like to go to more parties. 

 

Then he thinks about the Worldwide Government paper he has to write today, about the final exams looming up in two months, and squeezes his eyes shut again. He has a lot of stuff he needs to get done before graduation, and he doesn’t want to do any of it. 

 

He lets himself lie there in bed for a while longer, under Harry’s warm arm, with Harry’s hips pressed against his body, listening to his slow breathing. Finally, he can’t justify staring at the clock on his tablet anymore, so he lifts Harry’s arm carefully and slides out of bed. Harry makes a whining sound that goes straight to Louis’s heart, and he feels a little guilty, so he covers Harry up with the blanket before going into the bathroom. 

 

Today, he sings in the shower. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aren't these boys lovely? they deserve all the soft cuddles in the world am I right


	9. relapse

“How was it?” asks Liam, at lunch. “How did he like the flowers?”  
  
“Terribly,” says Louis. “He’s allergic.”   
  
Liam makes a face. “How was the afterparty? I heard there was alcohol. Was there alcohol?”

 

Liam’s a good boy, a little _too_ good—he color-codes his notes and goes on “study dates,” and his idea of a night out is watching sports with his bros. He’s never worn glitter makeup or drank alcohol out of a cheap red cup.

 

“No,” lies Louis. “It was fairly relaxed.”

 

He doesn’t share the rest of the evening with Liam and Zayn, the way he and Harry held hands for the first time, the way Harry looked silvery and drank coffee out of a chipped mug instead of alcohol, the way that he woke up to find Harry with glitter still sticking to his face, to their pillows.

  

It feels sacred, secret. It’s just for them and their early, scratchy-voiced mornings.

 

* * *

 

  
He and Harry spend Sunday in their dorm room.

 

Harry lies in the bed, studying for some Lit Analysis exam while Louis sits on the floor and writes his Worldwide Government paper. It’s quieter here than in the library, and every so often Harry will offer him chocolate or chips or ask, does Louis want to take a study break to watch this new music video with him?

 

And so Louis, too nice to say no, finds himself with a pile of tiny wrapped chocolates, watching a woman sing on Harry’s tablet, only halfway done with his paper.

 

Monday comes, and Louis wakes up to find that Harry has coffee and a big smile ready for him, and he feels married. Which is a wonderful feeling, really, except that it isn’t real, it can’t last. They’re still only nineteen percent compatible, something he has to keep reminding himself as he gets dressed and packs his bookbag while Harry does his hair.

 

“Can you?” asks Harry, holding out his curling iron and meeting Louis’s eyes in the mirror. Louis crosses the small room and holds the curling iron in the back of Harry’s hair, carefully because last time he burned himself. Harry smiles at Louis in the mirror. He has deep dimples, and they do funny things to Louis’s heart.

 

“I forgot to ask,” Louis says, winding a stray piece of hair around the curling iron, because he’s learned by now and doesn’t always need instruction. (Louis, doing hair—the post-Matching world is full of surprises.) He thinks they’re at a point in their relationship where they can talk about things besides class or homework, so he asks, “Did you know my friend Liam, before—” before Matching?  

 

Harry’s eyebrows go up. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, we know a lot of the same people, he’s cool. Plus, his Match—Zayn, right?—he’s in the Advanced Literature program, so we’ve had a lot of classes together.”

 

Really? Advanced Literature, Zayn?

 

“Really?” says Louis, who hadn’t known. He had thought, based on Zayn’s painting and douchey attitude, that Zayn was some kind of idiot. He should have at least asked Liam what his Match is interested in. Maybe he’s a bad friend.

 

“Yeah,” says Harry. “He’s really smart, one of the brightest guys I know.”

 

Well. Louis is officially clueless.

 

He steps back, examining the back of Harry’s head carefully to make sure that everything is in its place, and then hands him the curling iron. He’s about to ask if Harry plans to get into some Performing Arts company after graduation—well, after Rejects, but he’s not going to bring that up—but Harry stands up before he can ask. He grins at Louis in the mirror.

 

“Thanks so much,” he says. “Ready?” He grabs his bag, which has one shoulder strap instead of two like Louis’s, and looks at Louis with an expectant smile.

 

Surprised, Louis nods and picks his own bookbag up off the floor, following Harry out of their dorm. They’ve never walked to class together. Maybe they’re friends, now—friends instead of proper Matches, but Louis likes it anyway, maybe a bit too much. He’s friends with Harry Styles.

 

Harry chatters about people who messed up their dancing in the show, about the line he stumbled on (which Louis didn’t even notice) on their way to class. When Niall waves at them outside of the classroom, Louis gets an idea.

 

He switches his coffee to his other hand and grabs Harry’s wrist, sliding his palm down against Harry’s callused palm, lacing their fingers. Harry stops mid-sentence, looks down at their hands and at Louis’s face, and Louis’s heart does a funny pounding thing and he explains, “So people will stop asking us questions.”

 

It takes a second, but Harry smiles back, understanding, and they walk into class like that. Matches.

 

* * *

 

After that, they hold hands whenever they walk together, through the academy, to class, back to their dorm. They seem to do more walking together, and Louis likes the feeling of holding hands, of being connected to somebody else instead of being by himself. Even walking with Liam doesn’t feel like this—Liam can get distracted at any moment and leave, but Harry is always latched onto him by their joined hands, and he never tries to leave, anyway.

 

The next week, on their way to their first class, Harry asks Louis if he wants to sit at his table for lunch.

 

“I know you have your own friends,” he says, his hand twitching in Louis’s grip, and Louis can feel that his palm is sweaty. “And I know my friends are annoying, I don’t wanna annoy you, but I was just thinking…”

 

_Since we’re Matches,_ Louis supplies in his head, already planning to say yes.

 

“...since we’re friends, maybe you’d want to?” says Harry, looking at him with lines in his forehead, his eyes hopeful. Louis looks up at him, too, and their hands tighten on each other.

 

“Okay,” he says, and Harry’s already talking again, hurriedly.

 

“I mean, I _want_ to be friends, since we’re roommates and we’re Matches and I know we used to be friends as kids, and I think you’re cool, but if you hate my friends you never have to sit with us again, and tomorrow maybe we could sit with your friends? If that’s okay? If they want me to?”

 

“My friends all brought their Matches to sit with us,” Louis tells him. It’s true, except that he’s not really friends with Liam’s friends, he just sits and listens to them gossip. “So it’s okay if you come, too.”

 

Harry grins at him, relieved, and Louis gets to see his dimples before he’s talking about the girl who asked him to do her World Religions homework for her.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry holds Louis’s hand at lunch, too, on top of the table. Everyone at his table is with their Matches, too, except for Niall. Niall, as Louis quickly learns, is loud enough for two people on his own.

 

“Are you gonna eat that?” he asks Harry, pointing at his half-eaten sandwich. Harry covers it protectively with the hand not holding Louis’s.

 

“Yes,” he says. “I’m a growing boy. How dare you try to deprive me of nutrients.”

 

Niall sticks out his tongue and turns to bug Perrie. Louis eats his own crustless sandwich, listening interestedly as Perrie complains about how the girls next door to her dorm won’t stop having loud sex.

 

Harry is doing this really nice thing where he rubs his thumb over Louis’s knuckles, and it relaxes Louis’s arms and shoulders but makes his legs jumpy. He notices that Harry has stopped wearing his wristwatch over his _Tomlinson,_ and Louis can see it when he lifts his hand to drink his fourth coffee of the day.

 

Louis likes seeing it. He likes sitting here.

 

“You and Harry are really cute together,” Perrie tells Louis, switching conversation tracks abruptly. “Have you two had sex yet? Are you filming more porn, or something?”

 

Harry chokes on his coffee, and Louis’s hands go hot, his palms itching. He looks at Harry helplessly. Are they still sticking with the story that they’ve only ever done necking? He hasn’t asked Harry. They haven’t talked about this.

 

“Perrie, that’s personal,” says Harry.

 

“Oh, please,” says Perrie. “Since when have _you_ been personal about sex?”

 

Niall laughs in Harry’s face. “Oof.”

 

“Yeah!” says another girl. “I bet people’ll pay the big bucks to see this hot action.” She gestures between them, and Louis tucks his other hand under the table. He’s not sure how he feels about being called “hot action.” He’s never needed to worry about it before.

 

“Guys, stop,” says Harry, dragging their joined hands towards his chest.

 

Perrie looks at Louis again. “You have no idea how glad we are to be rid of Nick,” she tells him. “He was so annoying, and totally the wrong person for Harry. You’re much better.”

 

Louis can feel Harry stiffen beside him. He can feel the mood about to change, and he’s not sure what to do, except he knows he doesn’t want to talk about Nick. He’s never actually _heard_ Harry talk about Nick, and he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to. “Yeah, well,” he hears himself say. “We hadn’t planned on making a—sex tape. But we appreciate your interest.”

 

Harry chokes next to him again, and Louis squeezes his hand reassuringly. Perrie raises her eyebrows.

 

“Well, maybe you should plan on it,” she says. “Niall needs to something to get off to, since Melissa is out of the picture.”

 

Niall howls indignantly and the two of them get into a scuffle, which is more physical than Louis would prefer, but luckily it distracts everybody from the prospect of Louis and Harry selling porn of themselves. Louis decides it’s his turn to do the soothing knuckle-rubbing thing, since Harry seems to be temporarily broken, so he runs his thumb over the chapped, red skin of Harry’s knuckles.

 

It’s nice, he thinks. He never considered the little things like this, that would come with being in a relationship. Not that he and Harry are in a relationship, exactly, but they’re friends, and they get to do relationship-like things.

 

He thinks the rest of lunch goes well, and then he has to leave early because he helps Professor Cynthia grade Calculus homework sometimes, so he stands up. He balls up his lunch bag and tosses it into the trash, and then he has to let go of Harry’s hand. He gives it one last squeeze, and Harry looks up at him.

 

“I have to be early to Calc,” explains Louis. “I’ll see you later.”

 

“Okay!” says Harry, and Niall whispers _“aw”_ loudly, and Louis hovers, feeling unfinished, like people are watching him, waiting. He thinks of Perrie asking if they’ve had sex yet and thinks that maybe Harry gets questions like that a lot, and that maybe he would like to stop getting questions like that.

 

So he bends down and kisses the red patch on the side of Harry’s face, a peck on the cheek, and then stands up again.

 

Harry stares at him. Louis feels an itch of unease, but then Harry grins, lines in his forehead again.

 

“Bye, baby,” he says, and Louis can’t push down the glow from being called _baby_ for his whole walk to Calculus.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s a good week. Louis’s AstroPhysics professor tells him that he’ll write him a letter of recommendation for the Universal Space Association, and Louis gets the chance to kiss Harry's cheek again, when Perrie and Niall study in their dorm with them. Harry kisses his knuckles once in class, when they have to let go of each other’s hands before sitting at their desks. It all gives Louis a warm feeling inside, not unlike drinking alcohol, and he’s beginning to rethink the way he felt after Harry tried to kiss his neck.

 

The thing is, he reasons on his way back to their dorm, that Harry only kissed him as a rebound from Nick, but it’s been over a month since they broke up, now, and if Harry were to kiss Louis just because he wanted to, maybe Louis wouldn’t hate it. Maybe they could forget about the compatibility. The system isn’t always right. It wasn’t right about Niall and his Match, right?

 

He fishes out his empty coffee cup as he unlocks their dorm room. He needs to wash it so Harry can refill it tomorrow. The door swings open and Louis steps inside, expecting to see Harry lying on the bed doing his homework, but the bed is unmade and Harry isn’t inside.

 

Louis drops his bookbag on the ground. Maybe he should go to the library, but he’s starting to prefer the company of hanging out here with Harry while he studies. It’s cozy, he gets chocolate, and Harry always has interesting videos or articles to show him whenever he needs a short break. This week, too, they’ve been walking to dinner together, and he likes that, he doesn’t want to go study in the library alone.

 

He’s considering taking a quick nap when he hears a sobbing, gasping sound from the bathroom, a splash of water, and before he can think it through he’s yanking open the bathroom door— “Harry?”

 

Harry’s head jerks up, red and wet and streaked with ugly tears—he’s sitting in the bathtub, only his chest and knees visible above the water, his hair plastered to his head. His shoulders are shaking as he rubs at his face with both hands. Louis stands there in shock for a moment—his legs are frozen, stuck to the ground—before Harry chokes out, “Sorry—sorry,” and Louis takes a hasty step backward.

 

“No—I’m—I’m sorry,” he says, quickly shutting the door in his own face, standing there staring at the white-painted wood. Harry is crying about Nick. He’s having a breakdown in their bathtub, about his ex-boyfriend, and Louis had no right—he shouldn't have—he shouldn't have.

 

He’s grabbing his bookbag and fleeing before he can think too much about Harry’s scrubbed-red shoulders above the bathwater, about the knot in his stomach that seems like it’s beating along with his heart.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was smiling so hard while I edited this chapter, it's one of my favorites so far because of how domestic the boys are. Who do you guys like better in this story, Louis or Harry?


	10. accidents will happen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all welcome back! Real quick I wanted to mention that a lot of people have been mentioning how the lack of communication between the boys is pretty frustrating and I apologize for that. I find that sometimes communication can be a big struggle in real life, especially with conflicting personalities like these, so that was sorta my reasoning? I'm super sorry if it's annoying, though. 
> 
> Hopefully this chapter will make up for it! Some exciting stuff happens...... ;)

Louis buries himself in the library, studying for his exams. Harry instant messages him (“sorry for hogging the bathroom”) but Louis pretends he didn’t see it. His insides feel numb. Things had been going well. He had begun to consider that Harry might, might—

 

That _Louis_ might—

 

But they’re only nineteen percent compatible, so it’s useless to even think about. Besides, Harry is still healing from Nick. Thinking about Nick, the way he used to sit in Harry’s lap with Harry’s big hands clasped around his waist—it gives Louis a sharp pain in his stomach, like anger, so he buries that, too.

 

Liam comes into the library after dinnertime. For once, he’s alone, and Louis wishes he had messaged Liam asking him to bring him a sandwich or something. He’s hungry.

 

It’s not fair, because Liam and Zayn are in love, and Louis’s never been in love. And Harry has, with Nick, he probably still _is_ in love with Nick, and Louis wants to scream and also sleep, because his first love was supposed to be his Match. It could have been. It still could be, now, if Harry weren’t—like this.

 

* * *

 

 

Louis goes to bed before Harry that night, but he stays awake while Harry flosses his teeth and does some complicated skin routine in the bathroom. He peeks open his eyes when he hears Harry come into the room and shut off the lights. Harry is wearing long flannel pants and no shirt, and Louis squeezes his eyes shut again when he comes over.

 

The bed dips as he sits down on Louis’s other side. A pause, some rustling, and then Harry whispers softly, “Lou?”

 

Louis quickly pretends to be asleep again. He hears a quiet sigh, and then Harry lifts the blankets up and slips into bed, settling with his naked back pressed against Louis’s. This is how they sleep, and Louis doesn’t _want_ it to be comforting, but it is, and it’s also hot at every point of contact. The skin on Harry’s back is soft, and Louis closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep to the sound of his breathing.

 

* * *

 

 

Louis wakes up and finds himself curled against Harry’s back, both his fists pressing between Harry’s shoulder blades, and forces himself to get out of bed even though all he wants to do is stay there.

 

It’s Sunday, another day off, and some kids are at religious services, but Louis isn’t religious so he just pulls on a t-shirt and gym shorts and heads down to breakfast. It isn’t until he sits down in the cafeteria, eating his chocolate cereal, that he realizes he’s wearing one of Harry’s shirts, a black top that says CAST. It’s been worn and washed so many times that it’s faded and soft, and Louis thinks that at least if people see, they’ll smile knowingly to themselves and go about their day, not knowing anything at all.

 

He takes a detour on his way to the library, passing by Professor Zackery’s office in hopes that he’ll be in, but the sign on his door reads, “Will Return: Monday, 8 AM.” Louis hitches his bookbag higher and continues down the hallway, which is deserted since no classes are in session.

 

He wants to ask Professor Zackary what his chances of getting into the Universal Space Association will be if he spends a few weeks in Rejects. At what point will it become impossible to get accepted? What will happen if he can’t find anyone willing to Match with him in Rejects?

 

He’s frowning to himself as he rounds the corner, into the Humanities hallway, and then stumbles and freezes—in a nook between the boys bathroom door and the water dispenser—is that Niall? It is, it’s Niall, and Melissa, and—they’re kissing. Holy shit. Holy shit—Louis starts backing up and then turns tail and runs, back around the corner. Niall and Melissa, making out.

 

They’re Matched. They’re both Matched, to different people, and Louis is hurrying back down the hallways, clutching his backpack straps. He turns another corner blindly. Melissa is cheating on her Match, unless they, too, agreed to stay unattached and ultimately decline the Match. But still. Maybe they didn’t, maybe she’s cheating.

 

Should he tell someone? Melissa’s Match? Who is Melissa’s Match, even? Should he tell Harry? Maybe he should tell Harry. Harry can help him decide what to do.

 

He doesn’t even notice where he’s going until he’s standing outside his dorm room, fumbling with his keys. His mind really did automatically decide he needed Harry. It’s the sort of thought that makes him go hot under his collar, the sort of thought he’s been having more and more frequently lately. Shouldering open the door, he glances around the room for Harry and—

 

—and, oh, he’s still asleep. Still bundled up in blankets, the top of his curly hair visible over the pillow. Louis slides his bookbag to the ground and watches him for a moment. The blankets are perfectly still.

 

He crosses the room and sits down on the edge of the bed, letting the mattress dip and creak under his weight. He doesn’t know exactly why he does it, and there’s a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that says he needs to sit down and work through his own thoughts, soon. Maybe he’ll make a chart, or something.

 

He pulls one leg up on the bed and pulls the blankets back, just a little, just so he can make sure Harry is really asleep and not just lying there in denial that it’s morning. Harry’s eyes are closed, one hand wedged under his face, his mouth slightly open. Louis sleeps with his mouth open, too. They told him once, at the clinic, that it was bad for him. He watches Harry breathe for a moment, and then decides he's being creepy, watching Harry sleep, so he’s about to get up—he really is, he’s about to—when Harry makes a grunting sound and shifts on the bed, bringing a hand up to rub at his face.

 

Louis feels a twinge of panic—Harry’s going to be creeped out if he sees him here, just sitting on the bed—but then Harry cracks open his eyes and says sleepily, “G’morning.”

 

Louis’s heart does a weird thing, the thing it does when he’s watching the small animals in the bio lab and they do something so cute that he wants to squeeze them, and he says, “Hi.”

 

Harry smiles at him, says, “Lou.”

 

Louis’s heart gives an excited squeeze again and then he’s ducking his head, pressing his lips to Harry’s forehead. It’s nothing they haven’t done before, and it gives Louis a pleasant buzz in his hands, but when he pulls back, Harry’s eyes are wide and Louis realizes he’s never kissed Harry when they’re alone together. It’s always been so other people can see.

 

He opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t know what to say— _sorry?_ —but then Harry is clearing his throat, says, “Lou,” again, tracing the CAST across Louis’s chest. Louis shudders at the feeling of Harry’s fingernail ghosting over his shirt, and now he definitely can’t say anything. His words aren’t working. He closes his hands around the blanket.

 

Then he’s leaning down again, pressing his mouth to the side of Harry’s mouth, planning for a full-on kiss but chickening out at the last second, and then Harry surges up, moving his mouth to Louis’s and it’s wet, warm and wet and the skin around Harry’s mouth is rough but his mouth itself is plush and soft and Louis kisses back as best he can. Harry pushes himself up on his elbow, enough to cup the back of Louis’s head and drag him down to the bed with him. He’s sucking on Louis’s bottom lip now, and it feels good, so good, so warm and Louis half-falls on top of him, holding himself up on his elbows over Harry.

 

The positioning is awkward, Harry on his back in the bed and Louis off to one side, leaning over him, but he can’t think enough to change his position. The only thing in the world is Harry’s mouth and Harry’s hands scrabbling at his back, fisting in his shirt. Louis pushes his own fingers through Harry’s thick curly hair, holding on while he kisses deeper, stroking his tongue into Harry’s mouth and oh, oh, this is what this is like, this is what _love_ feels like.

 

It’s not—he can feel himself getting hotter as soon as he’s thought that—this isn’t love, this is just kissing, but, oh, it’s _kissing,_ it’s kissing Harry, Harry with his too-big hands and coffee smiles and shower singing and starry cheekbones. Harry, his _Match._

 

Harry licks into his mouth and it’s sinful, the way that Louis moans, the way that Harry starts sucking on his tongue with the same enthusiasm he has when he hands Louis coffee in the mornings, the same warmth as sleeping back to back with him, and oh, Louis’s hands are hot, his chest is hot, his mouth is wet and he _wants._ He _wants._

 

He shuffles closer, leaning down further, and Harry pulls one hand off his back to slide it up to the back of Louis’s neck, around to his jaw, cupping him close. His hand is chapped and too large and Louis loves the way it feels warm and sweaty against his face, like he could cradle Louis’s whole face in those hands, like he could hold Louis together with those hands.

 

Harry moves from his mouth to kiss his cheek and suck at his jaw, and Louis moans again, tugging at his hair. Harry hisses in sudden pain, and startled, Louis lets go of his hair, pulling away. He stares into Harry’s wide-open eyes and his stomach does a weird jump. He shouldn't—He shouldn't be kissing Harry. They haven’t—they haven’t talked about anything, he just basically jumped Harry in bed and Harry’s still sobbing over Nick, he hasn’t moved on, he’s still—Louis’s still just a _rebound._

 

“Uh,” says Harry, voice throaty and raw, “fuck.”

 

Louis doesn’t know what to say to that. What does he say to that? He feels like crying and also he just really, really wants to keep kissing Harry.

 

“I saw Niall and Melissa making out,” he blurts, and Harry’s face goes slack-jawed. “In the hallway.”

 

“Wh-whah?” Harry pushes himself up onto his elbows, and Louis sits back on his ankles. He’s sure he looks as red and flustered as Harry, whose hair is sticking up. Harry licks at his wet lips and the flicker of tongue drags Louis’s eyes down and, and fuck. Harry. He just kissed Harry, his Match, in their bed, and they’re not even—they’re only nineteen percent compatible, they’re just _pretending_.

 

The kissing was so good that Louis wants to sob.

 

“Niall and Melissa,” he repeats, feeling stupid and clumsy. Why is he bringing this up now? After sucking face with a guy he’s not even dating? ( _Are_ they dating? It’s usually implied that if you get Matched, you’re together, but he and Harry are—different.) “I was walking through the halls and I saw them making out.”

 

“Really?” Harry sits up a bit more, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Louis’s been around him enough to know it’s a nervous tic, just like licking his lips, probably the reason the skin around his mouth is so irritated all the time. (His mouth, though—his _mouth._ Louis has never wanted anything so badly.) “Oh. Oh, uh—was, was Melissa’s Match there? I mean—of course she wasn’t.”

 

“No, she wasn’t,” says Louis, puzzled by the question. Why would Melissa’s Match be there? Why did he even bring this up, it’s not the logical conversation to follow making out with somebody. He should be running. He should be apologizing. Apologizing, that sounds appropriate. “I’m, er. Sorry, for kissing you.”

 

Harry’s eyes go wide and he licks the corner of his mouth, rubbing at the side of his red face. “It’s okay,” he says, eyes darting down to his lap. Louis wants to squirm from the awkwardness. “It, uh, it woke me up.”

 

Louis nods, gripping his hands together in his lap. He shouldn’t have, he knows he shouldn’t have. Harry had just woken up, he probably hadn’t known what he was doing, and even though they both kind of started it, Louis feels responsible.

 

“We could,” says Harry, licking his mouth again and looking at Louis’s lips, “You didn’t have to, you know, stop.”

 

And then their mouths are on each other again, open-month to open-mouth, hands in each other’s hair, and Louis thinks blurrily as he settles on top of Harry that this might be the best and worst thing he’s ever done.

  



	11. a man after my own heart

“So,” says Harry, playing with his dinner, sitting sideways in his chair so that his back is pressed to the cafeteria wall and his feet are on the edge of Louis’s seat, “Niall and Melissa were hooking up in broad daylight.” 

 

Louis picks at his noodles. They came to dinner early, after several hours of studying and working and maybe a bit of kissing in between, and Harry looks pink-faced and adorable and Louis keeps wanting to look at him. Which is fine, he can look at Harry, they’re  _ friends,  _ but they’re also friends, which means he can’t stare. 

 

He wants to stare. 

 

So. Dilemma. 

 

“Well,” he says, seriously, because this matter of cheating on your Match is really very critical and he shouldn’t be thinking about kissing into Harry’s hair and down his neck while they talk about it, “it  _ was _ broad daylight, but I guess they didn’t think anyone would be using the hallways. None of the professors were in their offices, the halls were pretty much empty.” 

 

“Huh,” says Harry. He shoves a big bite of the pasta into his mouth and chews, swallows, gulps water. 

 

Harry eats a lot. Louis’s noticed that. He knows that Harry has snacks hidden around their dorm room, and he guesses someone that big must have to eat all the time. 

 

“So they thought they were being all sneaky,” says Harry. “But they weren’t, because you found them. Well, I guess you were being sneaky too, walking through empty hallways on a Sunday.” He pauses. “Why were you in the hallways again?”

 

“I wanted to speak with Professor Zackery,” explains Louis. His voice sounds too loud in the empty cafeteria—they’re some of the first ones here for dinner, which is why the only food available is noodles. “He teaches my AstroPhysics class, I do an independent lab with him.”

 

“Mate, really?” says Harry, eyebrows jutting up, mouth open in a smile. “That’s so cool! Independent lab. You’re, like,  _ so  _ smart.”

 

Louis feels hot, and it’s not entirely bad. “I’m not  _ that  _ smart,” he says. “You’ve passed me, in the class ranking. A few times.”

 

Harry  _ hmm _ s, shoveling more pasta with his fork. “Yeah, but that’s just dumb luck on my part.” 

 

Louis knows that isn’t true. Harry is enthusiastic about his homework—he talks to Louis about his class readings all the time. “But you spend so much time studying,” he says. 

 

Harry shrugs, chewing the pasta. “I like to learn,” he says. “But I‘m not as smart as you. You’re higher in the class ranking than me, right now, and that’s all that matters.”

 

Louis shakes his head. “Ranking isn’t everyth—”

 

“Look,” Harry says, talking over him, “you’re the smartest guy I know, okay? I’m,” he chews on his lip, “lucky to be Matched with you.” 

 

It’s doesn’t sound as honest as Louis would have preferred, but it still makes his heart squeeze, hearing Harry say it. It’s everything he never dreamed Harry might say. Harry glances up and Louis tries to smile at him, and after a second, Harry smiles back. 

 

_ I’m lucky too,  _ Louis thinks, unable to say it without sounding full and emotional. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

That night they crawl into the bed together, and Harry kisses him goodnight on the lips and then Louis wants to kiss him goodnight back, and they end up making out until their mouths are sore. The lights are off, and the bed is warm, and Harry’s hands are big and warm and he cradles the back of Louis’s head. Louis never thought this could be so nice, and he wants more, he wants more. 

 

He wants everything. 

 

They fall asleep back to back again, and tonight the warm press of Harry’s body makes Louis feel flutters of excitement. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

He and Harry part in the hallway with a peck on the lips, and Louis is buzzing from it, still tingly from waking up with Harry, when Liam catches up to him. 

 

“Hey,” says Liam. “How’ve you been? You don’t sit with us at lunch anymore.” 

 

“Oh,” says Louis. “I guess I don’t.” He’s been sitting with Harry and his friends, even though Harry has asked if he wants them to sit with Louis’s friends for a week. Louis is too embarrassed to say that he doesn’t have many friends, and he’s afraid that if Harry comes to sit with them, he’ll notice how quickly people get tired of talking to Louis and start talking to each other instead. 

 

“You like Harry a lot, don’t you?” says Liam. 

 

Louis’s hands feel hot, and he remembers that thing that Harry does with his tongue, his bleary-eyed good morning smile, the way he ranted this morning for thirty minutes about this particular soap that gave him a rash. “Um,” he says. “Yes, I do.” 

 

Liam hums. “I can tell,” he says. “So, whatever happened about Nick? Why did they break up?” 

 

Louis’s stomach twists. He hasn’t asked Harry about Nick—neither of them have mentioned him. First of all because it seems rude, intrusive, and it’s really none of Louis’s business, not his place to pry and gossip, and second of all, it feels like Harry and Louis are on eggshells, too delicate to survive anything like a conversation about Nick. 

 

(What are they? Are they still just friends? Are they proper Matches, or are they just friends who kiss sometimes? Thinking about it makes Louis’s head hurt, so he tries not to.)

 

“Er,” he says. “I don’t really want to spread rumors.”

 

“I won’t tell anyone,” promises Liam, but even the way he says it tells Louis that he will immediately go tell Zayn. 

 

“Er,” he says again. “I don’t think I can betray his trust like that. I’m sorry.” 

 

Lism makes a face. “Oh,” he says. “Okay. I get it.” 

 

He doesn’t get it, and when he sees Zayn in the halls, he says a quick goodbye to Louis and scampers off. Louis’s stomach twists again, as he watches Liam tuck himself easily into Zayn’s side, but he can’t keep Liam here, he can’t keep anyone here. People have to choose him. 

 

He hopes, he hopes—it’s almost too scary to hope that Harry will choose him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He and Harry are lying in the bed, Louis’s head by Harry’s curled up legs, both studying for different exams. Harry has socks on, and he keeps rubbing them together, and every time he does it, Louis thinks about kissing the printed star that sits right over Harry’s big toe. He doesn’t, because he’s not confident enough, and besides, what if Harry thinks he has a foot fetish? 

 

But he wants to. 

 

He’s reading an extra chapter in his AstroPhysics textbook, to make sure he absolutely understands the concepts it touches on, just in case. He still needs to talk to Professor Zackery about the Universal Space Association.

 

He glances at Harry, who is sucking on his top lip while he reads. Maybe Louis will still be able to get into the Universal Space Association. Maybe he won’t need to go to the Rejects academy at all. Maybe neither of them will. They could—they could—

 

Louis is scared to finish the thought. 

 

He has no idea what Harry wants. Harry likes kissing him, or at least he thinks so, but he might not want any more than that. Might not want to say things like  _ “I love you”  _ and permanently ink each other’s names into their wrists, spend the rest of their lives waking up next to each other.  _ The rest of their lives  _ is intimidating to Louis, but he can picture it with Harry, maybe. 

 

But Harry—Harry might still want Nick, and that’s even more intimidating, the scariest thing of all. 

 

Louis's not brave enough to ask. 

 

“Hey, check this out,” says Harry, pushing himself up onto his elbow. “Remember that Senator who got shot? It says here that the murderer’s Match had her tattoo surgically removed and got someone else’s name inked in, and she paraded around pretending to be Matched to some fake guy, just so no one would know that she was really Matched to a shooter.” 

 

“Huh,” says Louis. Harry must be studying for Past Civs. It’s his favorite class, Louis thinks. Harry never raises his hand in class, not like Louis, but he looks the most rapt in Past Civs, which is interesting because most people hate Past Civs. 

 

“Yeah,” says Harry. “She got arrested for it.” He flips the page. 

 

Louis decides this calls for maybe a small study break. (Maybe he can get a chance to kiss Harry again—they’ve done that a few times this week, and it’s been addictively sweet each time. Louis wants more.) 

 

“Do you want to go into something like that?” he asks. “History? Politics?” 

 

Harry looks up, his cheek pressed into the heel of his hand but his eyes wide. “After grad? I’m actually applying to the Universal Space Association.” 

 

Louis sits up straight. “Wait, really?” 

 

Harry is nodding. “Aerospace Engineering. I love thinking about outer space. I’ve been taking Mechanical Engineering courses to prep for it, I think I can get into the USA academy.” He tucks his hair back into his headband. When they’re studying, sometimes, Harry wears his hair pulled off his forehead, and it makes his face look brighter, more open. “What about you?” 

 

“I—AstroPhysics,” says Louis, mind racing with how  _ unlikely _ —they must have so much in common, why have they never talked about this? Why has he never asked? 

 

(Because he assumed Harry would go into something flashier, something that involved talking to loads of people and looking handsome.) 

 

For the first time, he doubts the nineteen percent compatibility. First the fluttery, warm feeling in his chest, and now this. 

 

“Really?” Harry sits up, too, staring back at Louis. “Oh, yeah, you said—independent lab, with—Zackery, right? Are you applying—” 

 

“Yes,” says Louis. “I have my application essay written already—”

 

“And your letter of rec?” 

 

Louis nods excitedly. 

 

“Wow,” says Harry. “Wow! You’re ahead of me, I’m still trying to get my letter of rec. Wow! This is so cool.” He beams at Louis, the same smile he gives him when he makes his coffee. “Who knew?” 

 

“I know,” says Louis. “I can’t believe I never asked!” 

 

“Me, too!” says Harry. “I totally should have known—Liam told me you were really into maths, I thought you’d want to go into that, or something.”

 

Louis’s smile falters a little—Liam knows what he wants to do, doesn’t he? He’s definitely, he’s definitely talked about it before—but he shoves that down. “Well,” he says. “Physics has maths in it.” 

 

Harry laughs, then—a deep husky sound. His laugh and his voice don’t match his pretty hair and his headband, but then neither do his big hands and broad shoulders. Louis thinks Harry’s pretty, like patchwork, even with the red chapped skin on his cheeks, around his mouth, on the palms of his hands. 

 

He wants to see Harry put glitter on himself again, and maybe on Louis, too, so they’ll shine together. Two stars. 

 

“You’re right,” says Harry, smiling at him, all warm and affectionate, and Louis can still see the deep dimples in his cheeks. “It does have maths in it. Remember—do you remember when we were younger, when you used to make up word problems for me to get me to shut up?”

 

Louis does remember it, vaguely. Sitting in the library, pulling a notebook across the table, scribbling down a word problem that he’d worked on in his head for half an hour. Pushing the notebook back to an excitable little fluffball of a boy. 

 

“I think I said it was to shut you up,” says Louis. “But really I was just showing off. I pretended to come up with the word problems on the spot, but really I spent a long time coming up with them.” 

 

Harry laughs again, tilting his head to the side so that his curly hair brushes his shoulder. Louis’s heart throbs weirdly, at the laugh, at the way that Harry smiles so casually, so comfortably. “Wow,” he says. “My role model comes clean.” 

 

Louis’s throat is stuck. Harry is nice to him—so nice. No one has ever called him a role model before, no one’s ever liked to be around him like this, just studying in bed and enjoying the companionship. 

 

He wants to say so. He wants to ask Harry about those days, ask if Harry really had a pre-teen crush on him. He wanted to ask why Harry got transferred to their academy, why Harry started being friends with the cool crowd.

 

He wants to say so many things, but he’s not sure how, or if now is the right time, or if the answers will be the right ones, so he just smiles back and tries not to think about how much he likes Harry.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry these updates aren't as quick as they were before, but I hope y'all are still enjoying this story!! All the comments make me feel all excited inside:D


	12. 'scuse me while I kiss this guy

Harry and Louis spend the weekend bundled up in their dorm room, studying, taking coffee breaks and breaks to watch interesting videos on Harry’s tablet. Louis even shows Harry a video back, something about meerkats getting into trash cans, and Harry is into it. He laughs at all the right places and calls the meerkats cute. Then he kisses Louis’s cheek. 

 

Louis likes him, a lot. A lot. 

 

He sees Harry doing his Mechanical Engineering practice exercises, his eyebrows furrowed over his book, and he wants to ask if Harry thinks he’ll be able to get into the Universal Space Association, even if they have to go to Rejects. But bringing it up would mean bringing up Rejects, and Louis gets a panicky sick feeling in his throat whenever he thinks about that. 

 

They don’t  _ have  _ to go to Rejects. Every day he becomes more sure that they don’t have to. They could graduate with honors together, top of their class, and go hand in hand to the USA academy and become space experts together. They could watch the stars from a small house by the water. He likes Harry so much, the way that Harry walks faster when he gets worked up about something, the way he sings to himself when he’s doing his laundry, the way he lies with his curly head in Louis’s lap and holds his book over his head to read. 

 

It’s scary how easily he could love him. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

“Hey!” says Harry, blowing into the room with his jacket unbuttoned and his hands full of a notebook and multicolored pens. “Do you wanna go to a party with me? Niall’s got loads of food in his room, he says it’s gonna be wild later.” 

 

Louis looks up from his laundry. It’s a Friday, and he hasn’t started his homework for the weekend, but maybe—he glances at the clock. Harry’s inviting him to another party. This time Harry is inviting him because he wants Louis to go—because Louis is starting to be friends with his friends. Maybe homework can wait. They have the whole weekend. “Alright,” he says. “Right now? I haven’t showered yet.” They were in a rush this morning. 

 

“Not right this second,” says Harry, stepping over Louis’s laundry and flopping onto the bed. “It’s gonna be fun! I’m glad you’re coming.” 

 

Louis’s face feels hot. “Well, er, thanks for inviting me,” he says, fumbling with his clothes. Harry can just  _ say  _ things like that, honest things like that without being shy or embarrassed. “I’m excited.” 

 

“Me, too,” says Harry. “I wonder if Melissa’s gonna be there. Maybe we can sneakily ask her if she’s really committed to her Match or not. If we ask her that, do you think she’ll know that we know she hooked up with Niall?” 

 

“I’m not sure,” says Louis. “She’ll probably think that Niall told us?” He collects the nicest jeans he has and a t-shirt that probably doesn’t look too nerdy. He wants to ask Harry if the clothes are good party clothes—they’re nothing like what Harry wore to the last party. Harry is good at clothes, so Louis sets the clothes on the bed. He’ll ask after his shower. 

 

“Yeah, maybe,” says Harry thoughtfully. “Well, we’ll have to be extra sneaky about how we ask, then.” 

 

That makes Louis smile. “Alright,” he says. “I’m going to shower and then we can go?” 

 

Harry bounces into a sitting position, making the bed groan under him. “Okay!” he says. “I’ll get ready, too. We can be early.”

 

Louis pauses—he hadn’t meant they needed to be early, but Harry doesn’t seem bothered, so Louis decides it’s not a big deal. He gives Harry his best smile before closing the bathroom door and turning on the shower. Harry has lots of products, nice-smelling soaps and shampoos and things. Today Louis uses Harry’s shampoo, the one that smells like citrus, and it makes bubbles in the bottom of the shower, running into the drain. 

 

When he’s done, he towels off his hair and wraps the towel around his waist. The steam makes his glasses fog up, so he opens the door, shivering in the colder air of the dorm. Harry is standing at the mirror, making faces as he fixes his hair, and as Louis jams his glasses back onto his face, he sees Harry turn and stare at him. At his wet hair, at his naked chest. Louis suddenly feels hot and self-conscious—Harry has seen him post-shower before, they’re roommates, but he’s never  _ stared.  _

 

“Oh,” says Harry, loud in the silence. His eyes are wide. 

 

Louis wants to cover his chest with his arms. “What?” he says. 

 

Harry’s mouth is open, but he shuts it quickly, turning hastily back to the mirror. “Nothing! Nothing. I just. I never see you shirtless.” 

 

Louis’s body feels warm even in the cold air. His glasses are still steamy. He doesn’t know what to say to that, nothing that isn’t embarrassing, anyway, so he just crosses the room to his clothes, clutching the towel around his waist. Is it bad to get dressed in front of Harry? He’s seen Harry naked, but that was before they were, well. Before they started kissing all the time. 

 

He thinks of kissing Harry like this, still damp from his shower, almost no clothes on and he feels a twinge of heat in his stomach—he wants to. He grabs his shirt quickly and looks at Harry, who is staring at Louis in the mirror. Harry promptly darts his eyes away, licking the corner of his lips. 

 

“Sorry!” 

 

“If—“ Louis feels like his body is going to burn up, except of course bodies don’t do that, they  _ don’t—  _ “If you want to look, you can.” 

 

Harry’s eyes go wide in the mirror and he turns around, meeting Louis’s eyes for a moment before his gaze drags down his neck, down his chest, to the towel clutched around his waist. Louis stands there, embarrassed but determined, as Harry takes a step towards him. He wants—he wants to kiss Harry like this, wants to loop his hands around Harry’s neck, wishes fiercely that he was brave enough to do it. 

 

Harry stares at him, a kind of awe on his face, and at the worst possible second Louis thinks of Nick and twitches. Hasn’t Harry seen naked bodies before? There’s nothing special about Louis, he’s just really skinny and he has that mole on the side of his neck. He wraps his arms around his stomach and peers up at Harry. 

 

“Louis,” says Harry, and it’s raw and choked. He puts a hand of Louis’s shoulder and slides it up his neck to his jaw. “Can I—“ 

 

“Yes, please,” says Louis, embarrassed about saying please as soon as it leaves his mouth, and to cover up he rises on his tiptoes as Harry leans forward and they kiss, Harry’s other hand coming to cup his face, too. It’s Louis’s favorite way to kiss, with Harry cradling his face like that. He puts his hands on Harry’s shoulders, pushes deeper. Harry licks at his bottom lip. 

 

Louis moans softly, sucking on Harry’s tongue until Harry whines, too. He hooks his hands around Harry’s neck, and their height difference means he has to stand up high and Harry has to lean down but it’s perfect, it’s perfect and Louis never wants it to end. The skin around Harry’s mouth is dry and Louis wants to kiss it better, wants to kiss everything, wants Harry to kiss his naked shoulders and his chest. 

 

Harry is the one to pull back, today. “Wow,” he says, “wow. Uh. I need—I need to get ready.” He tucks his hair behind his ear, looking flustered, eyes darting back down to Louis’s mouth. He swallows, presses their lips together again. Pulls away. 

 

“That was,” says Louis, still a bit dazed as Harry takes a step back, towards the vanity, “very nice.” 

 

Harry gives a choked laugh. “It was, wasn’t it?” He fumbles in the drawers of the vanity, mumbling something and Louis catches “always is, with you,” and then Harry catches his eye in the mirror again. They both swallow, and Harry says, “I had to stop, ‘cause I thought otherwise we might never get to the party.”

 

Oh. Oh, wow. Louis licks at his bottom lips, pulls at the t-shirt in his hands. How does Harry just  _ say  _ these things? “Ah—“ he says. “That’s, um, a good idea.” 

 

Maybe he doesn’t want to go to the party, after all.

  
  


* * *

 

 

But of course the party is fun. Of course it is, because it’s Niall, and his room is packed with just enough people to still be comfortable, and there’s lots of food and the music isn’t too loud. Harry sits on the ground next to Louis, his legs across Louis’s lap, laughing at his own jokes. Warm and pretty in red-and-pink plaid with black jeans. Sparkles on his face.

 

Louis has sparkles on his face, too, because he asked Harry about it before the party and Harry explained that it was glitter highlighter and did Louis want to try it? And Louis said yes, and maybe he looks a bit silly, but Harry looks good, and now he and Harry match. 

 

“I wish we had booze,” says Niall, leaning against his bed and holding a slice of pizza over his head, dipping it into his mouth. It’s gross and kind of fascinating, the way he eats, and Louis is glad he gets to watch this party from the safety of Harry’s side, cozy and safe. 

 

“Have some coffee,” suggests Harry, holding out his huge mug with both hands. Niall sticks out his tongue, and Harry laughs, and Louis watches them curiously because it’s clearly some kind of inside joke, a world of humor between them that he doesn’t understand. The thing is, he thinks he’s starting to understand, starting to belong here, with these people. Perrie even stopped him in the hallways earlier to ask him about his Lit Analysis essay. 

 

Louis pokes Harry, and Harry looks at him. Louis leans in and whispers in his ear, “Should we ask him about Melissa?” 

 

“Oh, yeah,” says Harry. He brings the coffee back to his chest, offering it to Louis, who takes a sip and then holds the mug because it’s warm and smells like Harry. “Hey, Niall, how’s your gal pal?” 

 

Niall, who os distracted by Perrie dropping something in his hair, looks back at them. “Zoe?” 

 

“No, Melissa, you dumbfuck,” says Harry. Louis doesn’t think he’s ever heard Harry cuss at anybody like that, but Niall is his best friend, and maybe best friend rules are different. Louis wants Harry to call him something bad, too, just once. 

 

“What about her?” Niall shoves half of his pizza crust in his mouth. Harry uses his feet to drag Louis’s legs closer to him, socks rubbing against the floor. 

 

“How’s her Match?” 

 

Niall makes an exaggeratedly disgusted face. Harry laughs again. This time, Louis laughs too, because Niall is funny and also because Harry laughs with his whole body and it makes him laugh. 

 

“Oh, come on,” says Harry. “She’s not that bad. I talked to her once, she’s very nice.” But he’s giggling. 

 

“She’s a boring old prude,” says Niall passionately. “She’s like an eighty year old lady in an eighteen year old’s body. One time she told me to use an inside voice, and I wasn’t even shouting.” 

 

Harry looks at Louis with mirth in his eyes, and Louis laughs a little because Niall is always shouting. “Okay, well,” says Harry. “The whole Matching system isn’t exactly about how much  _ you  _ like her.” 

 

“It should be,” says Niall. 

 

“How is Melissa getting along with her?” 

 

“Oh, she thinks she’s fine,” says Niall. “She thinks she’s decent. She wishes he had me, though, and that’s her own damn fault.” He crosses his arms around one knee. 

 

Harry exchanges looks with Louis again. Louis feels a bit excited to be included in drama like this, even though they are talking about Melissa behind her back. It’s a secret he shares with Harry. “Did she say that to you?” asks Harry.

“I can tell.” 

 

Louis wonders if Niall and Melissa have hooked up more than once. Maybe they’ve had sex. That’s against the rules—you’re only allowed to have sex in the academies once you’re Matched, and then you’re only allowed to have sex with your Match. Even if you’ve agreed to decline your Match already, they don't want STDs spreading around.

 

Niall starts talking about how much he hates Perrie’s Match, and Harry starts tracing lines on Louis’s pants. When Niall is sufficiently distracted by other people, Harry leans in and says, quietly, “So it sounds like Melissa’s having regrets.” 

 

Louis nods. “I wonder why she wouldn’t want to be Matched with Niall, if she obviously likes him.” He wonders why Nick changed his mind at the last minute. He wants to ask, but he can’t do it here, with all these people around. Harry will probably cry. 

 

Harry gazes at Niall. “Maybe she was scared.” 

 

That’s all he says. The music croons in the background, and Louis watches Harry’s face as Harry watches the party.  _ Maybe she was scared. _ Aren’t they all scared on Matching night? The rest of your life, that’s a scary thing. Maybe Nick was scared. Maybe he realized he couldn’t spend the rest of his life with Harry, maybe he realized he wasn’t ready to commit the rest of his life to anybody at all. 

 

When he finds Harry’s hand between their legs, Harry squeezes like his life depends on it. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAVE I MENTIONED THAT Y'ALL ARE THE BEST?? thank you sooo so much for all the kind comments! you all really make my day and keep me motivated to continue posting! lmk what you thought of their kisses in this chap! xx
> 
> question: right now this fic is rated Teen and (spoiler) there is a very non-explicit sex scene in one of the coming chapters. does it bother y'all to not have a explicit sex scene in a fic? i could persuaded to detail it more if that's what y'all want.


	13. the numbers game

Now that they’re doing all this kissing in private, Louis decides that he can up his public game, too. Everyone is convinced that they’re happy Matches by now. Last week, Perrie made a masterlist of every Match in their academy, and she wrote _ninety-one percent_ next to Harry and Louis’s names.

 

But people still talk about Nick. Harry probably still talks about Nick, so Louis thinks that the public might need a little extra convincing.

 

They’re all hanging out in a corner of the library, because Perrie and Niall are working on a group project together and bickering about it, and Niall keeps pretending to do work while drawing penises on Harry’s outstretched arm. Perrie is trying to get Louis to back up her side of the argument, which is just as inaccurate as Niall’s side, and Louis’s trying to dodge answering her.

 

So he cuddles up against Harry, who is sitting on the corner, up against some bookshelves. Harry looks at him, surprised, and then smiles and takes Louis’s hand under the table, with the arm that doesn’t have penises on it.

 

They hold hands a lot, and Louis likes it, the feeling of Harry’s chapped skin, the sweaty warmth. He leans in, kisses Harry’s cheek, moves to kiss his shoulder.

 

Harry’s body tenses, and Louis kisses the soft skin right next to the collar of his shirt. He likes to think that this affects Harry—that Harry feels the heat tingle along his spine and in his hands the way that Louis always does. He uses his chin to push away Harry’s collar and kisses his collarbone and the hollow of his throat, where he’s always wanted to kiss.

 

Perrie and Niall are muttering to each other, still arguing, and no one’s looking at Louis and Harry yet. Louis sucks on Harry’s neck, even scraping his teeth against the spot. Maybe he should sit on his lap—he’s seriously considering it, there are all these people around and he wants them to _see_ , but then Harry puts his hand on Louis’s shoulder and pushes back.

 

Louis sits up, staring, confused, at Harry. Harry’s frowning a bit, a line between his eyebrows.

 

Louis’s stomach sinks. Did he mess up? Maybe Harry doesn’t want him to kiss him. He wants to say sorry, but how can he say it here, with all these people listening? He quickly sits back in his own chair, folding his hands in his lap. He messed up.

 

But they kiss in public. Don’t they? Maybe Harry is ashamed of him. But this—pretending to be compatible—this was his idea in the first place. They’re _not_ compatible, though, they’re not, and somehow Louis has managed to forget that over the past couple of weeks.

 

(Everything is so good, when he’s curled up with Harry doing homework, or when Harry asks for kisses, or, or, or _anything,_ anything with Harry is good. How are they not compatible?)

 

He buries himself in an article on his tablet, reading nothing.

  


* * *

 

Louis waits until Harry has hugged Perrie goodnight and come inside the dorm before he says anything.

 

“I’m sorry I kissed you, in the library,” he says. He’s not sure why he’s apologizing, not sure what he did wrong, but he thinks it’s best to act contrite, maybe promise never to do it again.

 

Harry’s face twists, and he steps over a pile of crumpled clothes, grabbing Louis’s upper arm. “Look, mate, you don’t have to—you don’t have to do that stuff. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do that stuff. I know I started this, but I don’t want you to feel forced, or, or anything.”

 

Louis frowns. What?

 

Harry sees his face and stumbles over his words. “I mean—I just—I don’t want to force you! I feel like you’ve been doing all this stuff because, because I asked you to pretend like we had a super high compatibility in front of people, or because I started it, and I don’t want you to! I mean, I mean—I _want_ you to, of course I want to, I—I like it, but I don’t want to _make_ you.”

 

“Excuse me?” says Louis.

 

“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you!”

 

“You’re not,” says Louis, perplexed. “When have you ever taken advantage of me?”

 

Harry splutters. “That night when we were watching _Fiery Jealousy_?”

 

“Oh,” says Louis. “Well, that was just a mistake, and you stopped as soon as I asked you to.”

 

“But I haven’t stopped!”

 

“I haven’t asked you to, though, since then.”

 

“You—”

 

Louis catches his other arm. “I’m doing this because I want to,” he says.

 

“But—” Harry’s face is red, lit on one side by the lamp in the corner of their room. “But why?”

 

Louis feels like he’s gonna go red, too. “Because I like you.”

 

Harry’s mouth goes slack. He stares at Louis, and then he has both hands on the sides of Louis’s face, and then he’s kissing him, and Louis is kissing back, surging up against Harry’s body, hands up against his chest. Harry’s tongue is hot and it makes Louis feel tingly, all over his body. He sucks messily at Harry’s mouth, and then Harry is guiding him over to the bed, until the backs of Louis’s legs hit the mattress. They separate, and Louis’s mouth is wet, and all he wants is to keep kissing.

 

Harry is breathing hard, face is flushed. “Louis,” he says, deep and husky, and Louis scrambles backwards onto the bed, pulling Harry with him. He has both fists in Harry’s shirt, as he tugs him into bed, and Harry looks down at himself and then reaches behind his head, pulling the shirt up over his head. Louis falls back against the pillows, watching—he hadn’t meant to imply that Harry should start stripping, but he isn’t complaining. Harry pulls the shirt off his arms and tosses it on the ground. Louis wants to touch.

He wants to, so he does—palms flat against Harry’s chest, fingers splayed. Harry makes a choked sound and looks down, licking his lips. Louis doesn’t want him to be nervous, even though he has butterflies fluttering in his own stomach, so he asks, “Is this okay?”

 

Harry nods, touching his wrists, and then asks, “Can I take off yours, too?”

 

Louis nods, taking his hands away so he can sit up, and Harry pulls off his shirt, sitting back on his heels and staring openly at Louis’s naked chest again. It’s enough to make Louis squirm, and he grabs Harry’s wrist. “Not too much looking?” he asks. “Please?”

 

Harry shakes himself, snapping his eyes back up to Louis’s face. “Right. Sorry.” He leans forward, and Louis lays back against the pillows, guiding Harry’s face down to his own. They kiss again, for a few moments, and then Harry settles his body over Louis’s, their naked chests pressing against each other. Louis gasps into his mouth at the contact—hot—and Harry makes a deep sound in the back of his throat, and then they’re kissing again, and Louis’s hands are all over Harry’s back.

 

Harry is kissing his cheeks in a moment, and then he kisses his forehead and his chin and all over his face, and it tickles, so Louis giggles. He digs his hands into Harry’s hair and tugs, and then Harry flutters a kiss over Louis’s nose and giggles, too. After a second, they’re both laughing, hands tickling each other’s sides, hips rutting against each other.

 

This, he’s sure, is what love feels like.

 

* * *

 

  


Louis wakes up early, cuddled in Harry’s arms, and he lets himself lie there, swathed in the warmth and sleepiness. He can feel Harry’s breathing, can feel a cramp beginning to form where his legs are wedged under one of Harry’s. He’s clinging to Louis like a panda. Everything is still and silent, the light filtering in from between the shutters, the blankets burying them both.

 

Louis knows they can’t do this forever.

 

He knows, but he wants to—he wants to pretend like Nick never happened, like Harry came to him untouched and unaffected and excited to begin a love story with Louis. But he doesn’t fantasize, he doesn’t like things that aren’t real, so he forces himself to think about the facts.

 

He likes Harry. A lot. Harry probably doesn't like him back as much, and if he does, it’s probably just feelings left over from Nick. The first time he kissed Louis, he said _“I’m just lonely”_ and he’s probably clinging onto Louis in his sleep for the same reason. He misses Nick and he’s willing to substitute one warm body for another, and also they were pretending to be compatible, and it was supposed to just be an act but now things are all messed up.

 

He breathes out, slow, and feels Harry’s arm around his stomach, a pleasant weight. They’re not compatible. There must be a reason for that. Maybe Harry has some terrible secret. Maybe things are fine now, but they’ll come to hate each other over time.

 

That’s what the professors say. They say that infatuation can often be mistaken for compatibility, but the numbers don’t lie.

 

It makes his throat tight, his eyes hot and his hands tingling, because he can’t imagine hating Harry. Can’t imagine Harry secretly hating him, sighing when Louis gets excited about some new astronomy documentary and wants to show him. Can’t imagine not wanting to sleep bundled up together like this.

 

It’s like he’s already alone, like Harry isn't warm and snug next to him, like he’s gone back to the cold waiting room on Matching night. Like nobody wants him.

 

For the first time in weeks Louis cries, quietly, holding the blanket up to his eyes with as little movement as possible so he won’t wake Harry up. And then he kisses Harry’s hair, his face still wet, and wiggles out of bed. His foot catches on the blankets, and Harry groans, shifting. But Louis gets away, hurrying light-footed on the floor and quietly locking himself in the bathroom.

 

He won’t ask Harry about it. He won’t say _“I like you”_ again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahaa I'm sorry this is so late/short! it's my final exams this week, so I've been busy. I hope the kisses in this chapter made up for it!


	14. the elephant in the room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAH here it is !! the chapter y'all have been asking for since the very beginning! I hope it clears up some things we've all been wondering about :)

Harry still wants to hold hands and eat together, and so they do. Sometimes they eat alone, just the two of them outside in the courtyard, and Harry tells Louis stories about all the dumb shit he does—accidentally hitting on a professor in a bathroom at 2 AM, trying to dye his hair with shaving cream—-and it makes Louis laugh, and he thinks, he thinks that maybe…

 

He wants Harry to like him back. 

 

They don’t talk about that night, they don't talk about dry humping in their bed or about the marks Harry left all over Louis’s collarbone, and they don’t talk about Louis saying  _ “because I like you.”  _ Louis’s too embarrassed to bring it up, and maybe Harry is, too. Maybe Harry is nervous because he doesn’t want to say  _ “I like you back.”  _ But that’s fair, he doesn’t owe Louis that. He doesn’t owe Louis anything. 

 

Harry doesn’t act different, and he doesn’t seem upset—in fact, he laughs more, smiles more, bumps Louis’s shoulder more. Maybe he’s forgotten that Louis said anything. Maybe he’s even happy about it.

 

But Louis wants answers— _ needs _ answers, especially with the Highlights ceremony coming up. Highlights is when people have sex for the first time. Highlights is when Matches reinforce their commitment to each other, and Louis doesn’t even know if he and Harry  _ have  _ any commitment to each other.  

 

So on Sunday, he gathers together his courage to ask. 

 

He and Harry are sitting up in bed, watching cat videos on Louis’s tablet. “They’re so fucking cute!” Harry squeals, clutching the blanket around his shoulders while a brown-spotted cat peers up at the camera with big eyes. “This one is like you.” 

 

“What?” says Louis, momentarily distracted. Onscreen, the cat tries to jump from one counter to another and falls to the ground with a screech. “Why?” 

 

“‘Cause it’s stupid,” says Harry, giggling, and Louis grins and pushes his shoulder, sending Harry toppling onto his side on the bed.

 

“Yes, well,” says Louis, “you are like—like the one that ate so much cat food it got sick.” 

 

Harry giggles again, pushing himself back up. His shoulder bumps Louis’s and stays there, his arm warm and solid against Louis’s arm, and Louis fights the butterflies fluttering in his throat. He needs to ask. He needs to. He hates to ruin such a perfect moment but if he doesn’t do it now, he won’t be able to stop thinking about it, and he won’t be able to relax. 

 

“Hey,” he says, before he can chicken out, and Harry looks at him with a smile still on his face, dimples prominent. Louis presses the pause button on the video, and Harry’s eyes flick to the screen, smile faltering. Louis swallows. “Can I ask you something?” 

 

“Sure?” Harry licks at the corner of his mouth, smiling again, but this time it’s tighter. His eyes don’t smile. Louis presses their elbows together, and Harry’s eyes are wide and the pale green of his irises stands out starkly against the dark rings circling them—they’re pretty, his eyes are pretty, and he also looks a bit scared, and Louis—

 

Louis can’t say it. 

 

_ What happened with Nick?  _

 

“Why were you transferred here?” he asks, instead, the words like surrender. He  _ does  _ want to know why Harry transferred academies when they were little, but as soon as he says it, it seems like an invasion of privacy, too rude to ask. Quickly, he adds, “I mean, you don’t have to tell me, I was just curious. Sorry. It’s none of my business.” 

 

Harry shakes his head a bit, eyes still wide. “No! No, it’s okay. I don’t really—I don’t talk about it a lot.” He looks down at his lap, chewing at his bottom lip. “Before I came here,” he says, “I got, you know. I was sick. Y’know.” He licks at the corner of his mouth. 

 

Louis’s heart pounds, a couple times, tight and painful against his ribcage. “Really? Was—was it bad?” 

 

Harry lifts his shoulders, looking in Louis’s eyes again. Louis holds his breath, and for a terrifying moment, he’s afraid of the word  _ cancer.  _

 

But instead, Harry says, “It was my eczema.” It’s a word Louis doesn’t know, but Harry touches the red, dry patches of skin on his cheeks and Louis realizes. “It was pretty bad and they put me in the infirmary. I was too young to really understand, y’know...I thought I was going to die.” 

 

Louis swallows and presses their elbows more firmly together. He knows about the ugly, scratchy places on Harry’s skin, but he’s never thought to ask about them. It feels rude, like mentioning acne. Anyway, you can only really see them when Harry takes off his shirt, and when he takes off his shirt, Louis is usually not thinking coherently. 

 

“I was never gonna die,” Harry tells him. “It wasn’t that serious. But they sent me away, to a specialist, and then afterward they sent me here to be closer to the specialist. Sometimes I go see him.”

 

Louis didn’t know that. His throat is tight and he feels bad, for not knowing. 

 

“I cried a lot, when it happened,” says Harry. “I didn’t want to leave all my friends.” 

 

“Oh,” says Louis. He rubs his thumb against Harry’s arm. He can’t imagine that—being sick, getting transferred, having to leave everything and everyone he’s ever known. The feeling of almost being Rejected rises in his throat, and it’s hard to swallow. “I’m really sorry that happened to you.” 

 

“Yeah,” says Harry. He leans against Louis, his shoulders sagging. “It sucked. And now I’m ugly. But I made friends here eventually, so it’s okay. I sometimes wonder—you know, what life would have been like if I’d stayed there. But people get transferred all the time, it’s not a big deal.” 

 

It sounds like a big deal to Louis. He leans back, against Harry, squeezing his arm. Harry puts his forehead down on Louis’s shoulders, and they breathe together for a minute, along with the rise and fall of Louis’s chest. 

 

Then Louis says, “I believe they almost transferred me, on Matching night.” It’s the first time he’s said it, out loud. It doesn’t sound as bad as he imagined—it just sounds like something that happens, sometimes. 

 

Harry raises his head, meets Louis’s eyes. His eyebrows are furrowed, mouth shut, and he looks sad. “I know,” he says, after a beat, and Louis feels tight, small. 

 

He swallows. Can’t speak. 

 

Harry takes his arm and wraps it around Louis’s shoulders, pulling him closer. “I can’t imagine,” he says, “ _ why _ .” 

 

Louis licks his own lips this time. Harry’s arm weighs down on his shoulders, and their bodies are touching now, like they’re clinging to each other in this big empty bed. “It’s because—” his voice cracks— “my general compatibility, it’s never, it’s never been good.” 

 

It’s a humiliating thing to admit, something he’s never told anybody. The same thing as saying  _ no one likes me.  _

 

“That’s the thing,” and Harry’s voice is soft now, raw, “I can’t imagine why not.” 

 

Louis feels hot and he’s grateful, grateful to Harry for saying something so nice, something he doesn’t deserve, something that isn’t true. It’s easy to see why not. Louis’s awkward, he’s too formal when he talks to people, he’s boring. 

 

It’s like Harry knows a different Louis, a Louis who’s  _ worth _ something. 

 

Harry ducks his head and presses their foreheads together. They both look at their laps, but Louis can feel Harry’s breath now. When he peers up, Harry’s eyes are closed, his face quiet. 

 

After a moment of silence, he says, “I’m glad you...didn’t get sent to Rejects. You don’t deserve that. You don’t understand how sorry I am, that things had to happen like this.” His hand tightens on Louis’s shoulder, pulling him closer, his mouth pressing shut. “I wish we had...in a different situation...I’m sorry.” 

 

Louis’s throat closes up, now, and his eyes are hot, stinging. How does he respond to that? Of course Harry is sorry, but it’s not his fault. It was just that Louis didn’t try hard enough, somehow. He didn’t know how to try harder. He puts his hand on Harry’s thigh and rubs, hoping that Harry understands. 

 

Harry swallows, says, “Nick was a mistake.” 

 

Louis sucks in a breath, tears wobbling at his eyelids. He’s not quite sure where the tears came from. “What?” 

 

Harry lifts his free hand, drags it across his mouth. “It was a mistake. We couldn’t have spent the rest of our lives together. That night, at Matching…”

 

He squeezes his face up, then drops the hand into his lap. He opens his eyes, and Louis tries to blink away the tears, and Harry swallows again and whispers, 

 

“It was me.” 

 

A beat. 

 

“I’m the one who—the one who decided we couldn’t get Matched.” 

 

The words are heavy and they settle deep in Louis’s bones as he stares at Harry, letting the tears slip down his face.  _ It was me.  _ This whole time Louis has thought that it was Nick’s decision. This whole time he had thought that Nick decided out of nowhere, that Harry hadn’t seen it coming—that his sobbing on Matching night had been from shock. 

 

“What do you mean?” he whispers, his voice cracky.

 

“It was me,” Harry says again. “I guess I...I guess I knew deep down that it couldn’t work. We couldn’t work.”

 

Louis looks at Harry through blearly, un-wiped-away tears. He thinks of Nick and Harry kissing in the middle of classes. “Why not?”  

 

Harry shifts. He’s still looking at the bed, between them. “Me and Nick, we...we couldn’t talk about anything. Everything was so tense all the time. We would fight and then he would act all passive aggressive and I would start crying on purpose. And we didn’t even fight because we wanted to fix things, we just fought because we each wanted to be better than each other. Half the time I think I couldn’t even stand him. I could tell he hated me, too, sometimes, but I was angry about it, even though it was fair.” He hesitates, then puts his free hand on top of Louis’s. Squeezes. “That night, at Matching, we were just sitting there in the waiting room...waiting to sign the paperwork, and it was like dread, or something, and I think...I think we both knew.” 

 

Louis stares at him. There are tears leaking down Harry’s face, now, but he doesn’t wipe them away. Louis tugs his own sleeve down his arm and touches the tears with the cuff, stopping them. Harry gives him a watery smile, and Louis holds his breath because his throat feels like it’s going to explode in things he doesn’t know how to say. 

 

“He didn’t want me,” Harry says, and it wobbles, and he licks his mouth again. “A part of me thought we could still try, even though I knew it wouldn’t work out. But sitting in that waiting room with all the other happy couples and...and we weren’t even speaking, because earlier we had a fight about my hair looking too girly and I accused him of secretly wanting to date women even though that’s not true and I...I just knew. I realized I was just fighting for him because that’s all I’d ever been fighting for. So when we went to the room to get Matched, I told him I couldn’t go through with it.”

 

Louis can’t speak. Harry—Harry didn’t want Nick. All the rumors going around, the whispered  _ I don’t blame Nick _ s. All along, it was Harry who ended things. Louis swallows and dabs at Harry’s face with his sleeve again, and Harry tilts his face into his hand, pressing his warm cheek against his fingers. 

 

Louis turns his other hand face-up, so that their palms are touching, and pushes his fingers through Harry’s. They fit, scarred skin against cracked skin. Louis squeezes so hard he can feel Harry’s bones. 

 

Harry’s mouth wobbles, lips wet, when he speaks again. “I know I should have told you sooner. I know I was a bad Match. I shouldn't’ve ignored you. I told myself I was just trying to keep my drama out of your hair, I told myself I just didn’t want to burden you, but it was selfish. I didn’t want anybody. I just wanted to shut myself up and hate myself and hate Nick and hate everyone, in peace.” 

 

Louis squeezes again. He wants to say  _ it’s okay  _ but his throat is still stuck. Instead, he rubs his thumb over the back of Harry’s hand. 

 

“Nick was like that,” says Harry. “He was angry at everybody but he never  _ talked  _ about it. He was so angry at himself, all the time. We got so close that we were basically like extensions of each other, and so he started hating me too. He was so bitter and it made me bitter, and then I was so bitter that I didn’t want to leave him and  _ stop  _ feeling bitter. No one can live like that, the way we did.” He takes a long, shaky breath and lets it out in a laugh. “I’m so sorry.” 

 

“No,” says Louis, finally, a sound he can make, no matter how hoarse it sounds. “No, I’m...I’m sorry.” 

 

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” says Harry, and he half-laughs, half-sobs. “God, you’re perfect. You’re perfect. I don’t…” 

 

He doesn’t say what he doesn’t. He just pulls Louis closer, both of his arms going around to Louis’s back, buries his face in Louis’s shoulder and shakes—shakes. Louis puts his own head on Harry’s shoulder, too, closing his eyes and letting the tears leak out of his eyes as Harry sobs against him, body shuddering violently. He cries for Harry, for himself, for all the stuff he still doesn't understand, for all the good and bad and too-intense feelings welling up in his throat. 

 

They stay like that for a long time. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

That night, they skip dinner. Instead, they take a bath together, after Harry has cried himself out and is left lying exhausted on the bed. Louis suggests that he take a bath and Harry nods, so he undresses with his back to Louis and then asks if he’ll come, too. 

 

Louis does. 

 

Harry sits with his wet back pressed up against Louis’s shoulder, his head fallen back on Louis’s shoulder, their knees knocking together in the tiny bathtub. The water boils Harry’s skin bright red and wrinkles the skin on both of their hands, clings to the hair on Harry’s arms. They don’t kiss. They don’t do anything except hold each other, naked bodies soaking in the same water. 

 

Louis’s throat still feels like a sob but he thinks that they’re going to be okay. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what did y'all think?? were you surprised by Harry's confession? i know a couple of you saw it coming *eyes emoji* but let me know in the comments!


	15. the night is young

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoiler/warning: some non-explicit sex in after the second line break. if that's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip!
> 
> for the rest of y'all, hope you enjoy!! ;)

Before they know it, it’s Highlights. 

 

Louis spends the morning in their dorm room trying to explain to Harry that he looks good in  _ all  _ his clothes, while Harry panics because he doesn’t look good in  _ any  _ of his clothes. They do Harry’s hair together, even though it’s going to get wet as soon as they pour the holy water over them. 

 

Then they file downstairs and wait for their names to be called, one by one by one, as the professors disclose their Match’s paperwork. Harry bounces his leg and periodically gives Louis cheek kisses. 

 

“It’s going to be alright,” says Louis, putting his hand on Harry’s leg. “I don’t have any big secrets on my paperwork.” 

 

“I do,” says Harry, watching Zayn cross the room towards one of the professor’s offices. “I lied about the reason I was transferred. I secretly have AIDS and now you probably have it, too.” 

 

Louis laughs, pokes him. “I’ve had an AIDS vaccine.” 

 

“Well, maybe you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me, then.” 

 

When Louis does get called, and the professor hands him Harry’s folder, there’s nothing really surprising inside. He takes it back to their table and reads Harry’s birth certificate (he’s two months younger than Louis and his middle name is Edward), his grades (always good, even when he was little), and all the other files they have—health, compatibility, preferences. The preference is the only thing gives him pause—Harry had listed his preference as “Boys Only” at barely eleven years old. It’s young to have a definite preference, and Louis had somehow not known that Harry only liked boys. 

 

It doesn’t bother him too much. He just wishes he’d thought to ask. 

 

He waits for Harry to come back, and they open Louis’s files together. Louis tries not to bounce his own legs, now—Harry knows his compatibility scores have always been low, but it’s one thing to tell Harry that and another thing for Harry to see them for himself. Maybe he’ll stare at them, think  _ oh, yeah, nineteen percent.  _

 

But Harry skips right over the pages of his scores and picks up his birth certificate. 

 

“You were born on Christmas Eve? Mate, why didn’t you ever  _ tell  _ me?”

 

* * *

 

  
  


Neither of them care about the significance of the holy water bathing, so they sneak out as soon as they can. Louis thinks about Liam and Zayn having sex for the first time and wishes them the best. Even though it was less than a year ago, it’s hard to imagine a time when he had a crush on Liam. Maybe they could have been compatible, in another universe. Boring, but compatible. 

 

Harry is electric. 

 

They slip outside to the courtyard to watch the stars. There are a few clouds, but Harry points out a clear patch of sky where they can make out Orion’s Belt. The grass is soft and dewy, but they lie on their backs anyway, hair damp from the holy water. 

 

“When did you decide you wanted to go to the Universal Space Association?” asks Harry, tilting his head to look at Louis. Louis can see him in the dark, the ball on the end of his nose, the white of his one-piece outfit making his face seem whiter. Harry is pretty. Louis wants to kiss him. 

 

“I’ve always wanted to,” he says. “Well, when I was little, I wanted to just do maths, but as soon as I learned about being an astronaut, I wanted to do that.” 

 

Harry grins. “Every little kid wants to be an astronaut.” He pokes Louis’s leg. 

 

“I know,” says Louis. “I guess I just never grew out of it.” 

 

Harry  _ hmm _ s, still grinning. He turns his head back to the sky, and Louis keeps watching him, the slope of his upturned nose, the clumps of wet hair. 

 

“When did you decide?” he asks, following Harry’s eyes up to the stars. 

 

Harry gazes up at the sky. “Year 11,” he says. “A boy with dorky glasses taught me what a lightyear was. I thought to myself, I’ll follow this guy anywhere.” 

 

Startled, Louis looks back at Harry’s face. He has a small smile around his mouth. “Me?” Louis hears himself say. 

 

Harry tilts his head, smiling at him, and says, “I thought you were the whole world.” A pause. “I sort of still do.”

 

Louis’s body feels hot and then cold. All those years ago—the made-up word problems, the hours in the maths lab. Back before he took his first compatibility score, before he began to sit alone at meal times. “But...but then why did you leave?” 

 

Harry’s forehead wrinkles. “You mean, when we stopped hanging out?” 

 

Louis nods, feeling whiny and silly, but he’s always wondered—when did he stop being cool enough? Why did everyone leave?

 

Harry purses his lips, glances back up at the sky. “I joined Performing Arts,” he says, “and I guess I thought I had to change myself to be one of them. It felt like no one wanted me to be smarter than them, so I started acting dumb, just so they’d like me. It’s stupid, I guess.” He doesn’t sound entirely sure, and Louis thinks of Harry doing his homework in his room, laughing when Louis says he’s smart. 

 

“Oh,” he says. Wind blows through his wet hair and he shivers, scooting closer to Harry on the ground. “It seemed like everyone decided that, all at the same time. I didn’t know what was happening.”

 

Harry looks at him. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know you cared.” 

 

“I do care,” says Louis, even though he knows that Harry is talking about back then, back when he had sat alone in the maths lab making up word problems for himself. “I care a lot.” 

 

Then Harry is moving in softly, his hand coming up warm and solid to cup Louis’s face, and they kiss under the sky and it’s wet and perfect and it’s everything Louis’s ever wanted. 

 

“Me too,” Harry mumbles, against him, and to stop himself from crying Louis just kisses him harder.

 

* * *

 

 

That night Harry fists his hands in the front of Louis’s shirt and whispers, “Ready for our magical first time?” and they giggle together, giddy, because in the dorms all around them people are fucking for the first time and somehow, it’s funny. 

 

He peels off Harry’s pants and Harry kicks off his underwear and Louis touches his pale leg, the soft hair there, marveling that he gets to do this. He quickly struggles out of his own clothes and then leans over Harry to kiss him, hot mouth against hot mouth, and Harry moans straight away and Louis knows this is going to be good, this is going to be easy. 

 

It’s not easy, not physically—Louis yelps when Harry tries to touch his thighs because holy shit he’s  _ ticklish  _ there and he never knew—and Harry’s not as flexible as Louis maybe assumed he was, and they’re in fits of giggles trying to get the condoms on. But when Harry gasps, “You’re amazing” between laughs, and “You’re beautiful” when Louis has to bite his own hand so he won’t moan too loudly, and “You’re the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me” with his eyes screwed up and his mouth open and his hands scrabbling at Louis’s back—then, everything feels easy. 

 

Everything is hot and sweaty and pretty soon Louis’s gone, losing himself in the  _ thump thump thump  _ of the bed against the wall, in the wetness of Harry’s mouth, in the ache where Harry’s thighs press into his sides—in the way Harry moans  _ “Lou”  _ and puts his hands over his face, body shuddering—

 

Louis is gone. 

 

And then there’s only  _ them,  _ gasping and lying sweaty chest to sweaty chest, Harry’s hands still over his face. After he’s caught his breath, Louis nudges the hands away with his nose, kissing all over Harry’s face. Harry gives another weak “Lou” and kisses back, and soon Louis is rolling off and kissing into the side of Harry’s hair. 

 

He loves him. He loves him. He never would have thought—but he  _ loves _ him. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what did y'all think? i decided to keep the sex scene pretty low key, i hope that ended up being okay!


	16. sex, lies, and videotape

Louis is buried in the corner of the library, walls of books blocking his view of the rest of the room because he doesn’t want anyone to find him. He loves Harry and Harry’s friends, but this is finals week and he can’t handle any more distractions.

 

His eyes hurt from staring at his tablet for too long. He writes another paragraph that he can barely understand for his Past Civs final essay, then checks the time. It’s nearly seven and he’s been working for ten hours—Harry brought him lunch at some point but that feels like forever ago. He sighs, rubs his eyes, and goes back to work.   


It’s ten at night before he leaves the library. His first finals are tomorrow morning, but he’s too tired to worry about them. Three days of finals and then, and then it’s graduation and that’s it. He and Harry...he doesn’t know what’s going to happen between him and Harry, but he’s too tired to think about it right now. They’ll talk. After finals.

 

He slips into the dark dorm room...Harry is asleep, a curled-up lump under the blankets. Louis changes clothes quietly and brushes his teeth, closing the bathroom door behind him when he’s done. He crawls into bed, snuggling up against Harry’s back, pressing his face into his curly hair for a moment and breathing in. Harry smells like shampoo and sweat, and it makes Louis feel safe and familiar. He pulls the blankets around himself and cuddles down.

 

He’s drifting to sleep when Harry starts to squirm around. Louis’s awake immediately, peering at his back. Harry has night terrors sometimes and wakes up shaking—once he even threw up. It might be about finals, or it might be about finding himself naked onstage again, and Louis’s fishing his hand out of the blankets to touch Harry’s back, maybe wake up him, when Harry squirms again and moans out, _“Nick.”_

 

Louis freezes.

 

When he can feel things again, his heart is pounding in his throat, his hand hovering over Harry’s back. Harry mumbles to himself, incoherently, and Louis’s head is drumming with _Nick, Nick, Nick._

 

Harry sneezes abruptly. Louis snatches his hand back into the covers, and after a minute of sniffling, Harry settles back down, breathing deeply. Louis tries not to move at all, doesn’t want Harry to wake up. His heart is still pounding, but it’s duller now. Nick. Harry still...after all this time... _Nick._

 

Louis forces himself to roll over, so he’s back to back with Harry, the way they used to sleep. Harry’s back is warm, so warm, and he can’t convince himself to move away, just...just lies there, touching him, knowing. Harry still thinks about Nick. Harry is probably still in love with Nick. He’s never said he _isn’t._ And wouldn’t that be something he’d say? Since he and Louis are—well, he and Louis aren’t _anything._

 

They aren’t anything. They’ve never talked about it. They’ve never talking about officially starting to date, and Harry and Nick were dating for two years...it’s a long time, to get over so quickly. And Harry’s still...in his sleep…

 

Louis feels like crying, but the tears won’t come. He just lies there, feeling like his stomach is eating him from the inside out, thinking _Nick, Nick, Nick._

  


* * *

 

 

Louis’s finals go well. He manages to block the incident last night out of his mind for a couple hours while he fills in bubbles on exam paper, and then he escapes to the library again. He knows that he’s going to pass his finals; he knows he’s going to do well. He’s good at school, good at classes. It’s one of the only things he’s good at—maybe the only thing.

 

He had thought he was good at Harry, too, but now he’s not sure.

 

He vigorously highlights his maths notes, on his tablet, trying not to think about it while he thinks about it. On the one hand, it was only a slip in the middle of the night. Harry can’t be blamed for dreaming about Nick. Logically, Louis knows this is true, but then, _but then._ It was definitely a moan. Nick was sexy. Harry was _in love with him,_ and he’s never said _I love you_ to Louis.

 

And, and Louis is never going to measure up to Nick. Nick was smart and handsome, carried his head high and was probably amazing in bed. They made a whole _sex tape_ together—Louis feels shame curling in his stomach when he thinks about how clumsy he was with Harry on Highlights, on the other nights when they’ve made love. Harry hadn’t complained but Louis _knows._ Knows he’s a “bad lay,” like Niall might say.

 

He doesn’t want to be bad. He just wants Harry to love him. He feels hot with shame, so he buries himself in maths again, watching a couple of cute cat videos to make himself forget. It only sort of works.

 

He drags his feet to dinner, sitting down at their regular table, but Harry doesn’t show. Louis watches the entrance for his big, lanky body, because despite everything he’s practically overwhelmed with the need to see Harry, but the only one who comes through is Niall.

 

Niall falls into the seat next to him and grins. “You’re not studying either?”

 

Louis looks at him and wonders, in mild horror, if Niall isn’t studying for his final exams. “Well, I was,” he explains. “I’m just taking a quick break, for dinner. Have you been studying?”

 

“Nah,” says Niall. “Don’t need to.” He shoves half a pickle in his mouth. Niall eats the weirdest foods, peanut butter straight from the jar and the cheese from mac n’ cheese without...the mac.

 

“Oh,” says Louis. “Really? I mean, aren’t your classes difficult?” He still doesn’t feel entirely comfortable around Niall, alone—they have nothing in common, but Niall is fascinating to watch. It’s like he doesn’t realize there are other people around him, who notice things like the way he eats. Maybe he simply doesn’t care.

 

“Not really,” says Niall, scraping up ranch dressing with the remainder of the pickle. “I know I can pass ‘em all. I’ll graduate, and then—on to Rejects!” He pops the rest of the pickle in his mouth, grinning at Louis with his mouth open as if Rejects is something to celebrate.

 

Louis’s stomach churns and he quickly focuses on his own food. He’ll probably end up in Rejects, too. He had thought that he and Harry...but if Harry wants that, why is he still moaning about Nick in his sleep? And what if he tells Harry he wants to stay Matched, and Harry says no?

 

He tries to squash that.

 

“What about Melissa?” he asks, and then, quickly, “I mean, it’s none of my business. I mean, are she and her Match—?”

 

Niall gulps water and grins at him again, lopsided. “They’re getting inked. Gonna try for babies. Melissa’s always wanted babies.”

 

Louis can’t tell, from the way Niall dives back into his food, the cheerful look on his face, if he’s sad about that or not. He swallows.

 

“Hey,” he says, and he doesn’t know what makes him say it, except that he’s still thinking about Harry moaning Nick’s name. “Have you watched, you know. The porn?”

 

Niall chokes on his food, laughing with his mouth full. Louis tightens his shoulders, feeling awkward as Niall gulps water again. He looks at Louis, his messy blonde hair all over his face, eyes and mouth open and mischievous. “Watched it? My good mate, I helped to _edit_ the porn.”

 

“Oh,” says Louis. Well. So there were more than two of the Porn Entrepreneurs. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised—Niall seems a lot more likely to film a sex tape than Harry.

 

Niall’s grin is growing. “Wait,” he says, and Louis gets the powerful urge to get up and run, “have you _not_ watched the porn?”

 

“I—I never had the opportunity,” says Louis, defensively. “I didn’t think it would be appropriate.”

 

“Boy, oh boy,” says Niall. “Do you want it now? ‘Cause I can give it to you. I have the original file on my tablet.”

 

Louis opens his mouth to say no, but. But. _Nick._ He tries to tell himself it wouldn’t be appropriate, but Harry _did_ distribute it himself, didn’t he? Made money off it, even. And, and Louis knows nothing about Harry and Nick’s relationship, knows nothing except that they fought a lot, and Harry said it would never work out. That Harry decided for both of them that it would never work out. He doesn’t know anything about what it was like when they were in love.

 

(Doesn’t know what Harry’s like when he’s in love with somebody.)

 

“Well,” he says, and Niall cackles, throws an arm around him. Louis’s stomach feels sick.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s sitting on his bed, fiddling with his tablet. Harry is gone, probably studying in the library for once. Louis should be there too, but...but he can’t think, right now, and besides he’s mostly done by now, he’s been studying all day. He clicks on Niall’s message for the fourteenth time and then clicks off again. Should he really be doing this?

 

He’ll just—he’ll just watch the beginning. Just before they get to the real sex. He clicks onto the message again, hovering over the attachment, which is titled “xxx.”

 

He clicks on it.

 

A window pops open, and Louis remembers—in a panic—his earbuds. He grabs them off the side table, two little white buds, and connects them frantically to the tablet before sticking them in his ears. Luckily the video is still loading, not playing sound, but then a shaky image comes onscreen, the camera fumbling for a moment before focusing.

 

The video is incredibly bad quality. He can see Harry standing in front of the camera, wearing a long t-shirt and probably nothing else, and his stomach tightens. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this, but he can’t click away, watches Harry wink at the camera and stick out his tongue—he looks young, his hair is shorter and he still has corrective wires on his teeth. He steps away from the camera and Louis can see Nick sitting on the bed. Nick looks younger, too.

 

Louis feels wrong, wrong, wrong as Harry tugs at the hem of his own t-shirt and winks at the camera again. He steps over to the bed and climbs onto Nick’s lap—Nick is naked, at least from what Louis can make out—and wraps his arms around his neck, looking back at the camera and giving a would-be sexy smile.

 

Louis’s stomach churns. He doesn’t like this. It’s not Harry. Except it is Harry, and when Harry cups Nick’s face and kisses the same way he kisses Louis—when Nick puts his hands on Harry’s waist like he owns him—

 

Louis hurriedly clicks off the video. He shoves his tablet under the blankets and swallows, and then swallows again—his mouth feels like it does just before he throws up. He stands up, walking to the door and then coming back again, swallows. He can’t. He can’t go through with this. Harry and Nick—that will always be there, in the background, and he’ll never be sure if Harry really cares about him or if he’s just filling Nick’s space.

 

He can’t ask. He can’t even ask. He doesn’t want to know the answer.

  


* * *

 

 

Louis doesn’t cry. He takes his finals like a normal person, reworking all his answers until the time is up, and then he tells Liam.

 

Not about the porn—not about Nick. He tells Liam about their compatibility.

 

They’re sitting in the corner of the library, working on their last final paper (Lit Analysis), and he says, “Liam, can I tell you something?” and sets his tablet down. Liam looks at him, raising his eyebrows.

 

“Okay?”

 

He’s probably wondering what on earth he, Louis Tomlinson, could have to tell him. Louis swallows and licks dry lips before realizing it’s a tic he picked up from Harry. “It’s, uh, about Harry. About our compatibility.”

 

“Okay?” Liam’s eyebrows creep even higher. “Is something wrong? Are you guys not going to accept the Match?”

 

Louis swallows again. He doesn’t know. They haven’t talked about it, and Harry’s been fretting over his finals—but they have to talk about soon. The day after tomorrow is graduation, and that night, they’ll be given the choice to accept or decline. There’s not that much time left.

 

“We lied about our compatibility,” he says, looking down at his notebook. “It’s not ninety-one percent. We flipped the numbers. Our actual compatibility score is nineteen.”

 

There’s a pause. Louis glances at Liam’s face, and his mouth is open. “What?” he says. “What? Why?”

 

Louis stumbles. “I guess we didn’t want people to feel sorry for us,” he says, lamely. “I guess...he was getting so many questions, about Nick, and we just…”

 

“Wait, so you guys aren’t—” Liam makes a vague hand gesture, glancing over his shoulder around the library like Harry might sitting right there. “You know, together?”

 

Louis shakes his head. “No, not officially.”

 

Liam stares at him. “So you’re not accepting the Match? Nineteen percent, that’s—that’s awful. I don’t know _anyone_ with a compatibility even—even close to that low.” He runs a hand over his short hair, swallowing. “I mean, that doesn’t...compatibility isn’t everything.”

 

He says that, but he’s just being nice. He just feels sorry for Louis. Liam and Zayn don’t have the best compatibility in the academy, but it’s worlds better than nineteen percent. “I don’t know,” Louis says. “I’m not really sure why it is so low. We get along very well.”

 

They do. They do, they’re friends, they kiss and things, but Louis isn’t Nick and he knows he never will be. For all he knows, Harry is sitting in their bathtub right now, sobbing about Nick. For all he knows, _Harry_ is watching the porn, getting off to it.

 

Liam rubs the back of his neck. “Maybe there’s a reason you’re not seeing,” he says, kindly, and Louis looks at the table.

 

“Have you ever thought we seemed…”

 

Liam shrugs, one hand stretching out to touch the edge of Louis’s fist, resting on the table. “You guys seemed so in love.”

 

Louis’s stomach twists again. So in love. They seemed so in love. Harry, laughing at Louis over cat videos, Harry smiling at him in the dark under the stars, Harry curling around him in their bed. Harry. He wants Harry to be in love with him, but Liam is right. It is impossible. Nineteen percent—there must be something he isn’t seeing.

 

Or maybe it’s something he is seeing, now, for the first time. Maybe the thing is Nick.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh noooo the angst isn't over! sorry y'all. i hope this chapter was satisfactory! we're getting close to the end now :-)


	17. burning bridges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAH I'm so sorry for the unexpected hiatus! I promise that this fic is completed, and it WILL be posted in full. Have an extra long chapter to make up for the wait!!!

 

Finals are over. Louis is sitting on their bed, watching Harry try on his graduation outfit. He’s trying to wiggle into the sleeves, shirt stretching over his broad back, the faint muscles flexing as he moves. Normally, Louis likes to watch him, but he feels tired and numb, like there’s no room in his cotton-stuffed head for feelings. 

 

Tomorrow, this will all be over. This charade they’ve created, playing at being in love—it will be over. He will say goodbye to Harry, and he’ll never get to feel those big warm hands cupping his face again, will never see Harry’s face scrunch up while he laughs, will never hear Harry say,  _ “I love you.”  _

 

The ache of wanting to cry is still settled in his throat. It’s been there for days. 

 

“Hey, Haz,” he says, and Harry looks over his shoulder, hands halfway to his hair. “Can we...talk about this?” 

 

Harry looks at him, lips parted. It takes a second, but then he nods. “Yeah,” he says. “About graduation?” He comes over to the bed, leaning against it and making the bed tip. He sits next to Louis, their shoulders touching, and pulls one foot up onto the bed. “How are you feeling?” 

 

Louis can’t look at him. Can’t look at his dry, red cheeks, at his whitish-gray eyes, at his blonde eyebrows. He looks at his lap instead, and his eyes are hot now. “I think we should decline our Match.” 

 

Silence. Louis breathes out shakily, waits—hopes, hopes, hopes that Harry will say it now. Now, now that they’re about to lose each other—now maybe he’ll say it.  _ But I like you, Louis. But I want you.  _

 

No one has ever wanted him before. 

 

“Oh,” says Harry, strained. “Oh. I didn’t…okay.”

 

“Because,” and it hurts, it physically hurts, his stomach is cramping and he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to, he just wants to curl up in Harry’s arms, “our compatibility is so low, we just...we might not…” 

 

Next to him, Harry shifts. Drops his head. They’re side by side, looking at their laps. “But,” he says, and his voice cracks on the word. “But I don’t—I mean, they’re just, they’re just scores.”

 

“They’re our future,” Louis gets out. 

 

Harry rubs at his face. “But I didn’t think you—” he says, and then breaks off. He rubs his hand over his mouth, silent. “I didn’t think you cared about that,” he says, finally. “Why didn’t you say something before?” 

 

The way Harry said Nick’s voice in his sleep swims through Louis’s head. He can’t even think clearly anymore; the pain in his head muddles everything. “I’ve just been thinking,” he says, and even he can hear how lame and pathetic he sounds. It’s no excuse, not after everything they’ve done, these past few weeks. The way Louis’s hands pressed bruises into Harry’s hips, marks that felt more permanent than the tattooes on their wrists and the flimsy, abstract numbers floating somewhere in cyberspace. 

 

But it’s not just the numbers. It’s Louis. Numbers can be forged, but Louis is stark and awkward and unfixable. 

 

Unlovable. 

 

“About what?” asks Harry, his voice raw and louder than before. “What’ve you been thinking about? About—about leaving me?” 

 

He sounds—almost angry, and Louis raises his head, the pain behind his eyes throbbing so hard that he can barely see straight. “You are one to talk,” he says, surprising himself at the sharp, tight edge to his voice. “How can I—how can I trust you? How should I know that tomorrow, you won’t—you won’t—you won’t change your mind just the way you changed it with Nick?” 

 

A sob is building in his entire body, choked by the pain. He can’t. He can’t say these things, thesse things that had been pounding in his head since he heard Harry mumbling in his sleep. Harry looks at him, and his eyes are wet but his eyebrows are angry. 

 

“I wouldn’t do that,” he says, voice rising. “Is that what you think I’m going to do? Lou, you don’t have to be  _ scared,  _ I’m not going to leave you!” 

 

“I can’t—” Louis stumbles to his feet. “I can’t believe that. I can’t, Haz! I can’t—you were just, you were just in love with Nick, just a couple months ago, and now you’re in love with me? ANd you don’t—you don’t—you don’t understand, I’m  _ me,  _ and there is a reason our compatibility is so low—”

 

“They’re just numbers!” Harry shouts. 

 

“And I’m just a fuck up!” shouts Louis, balling his hands up in his hair, his head pounding and his whole body shaking. He keeps his back to Harry, taking several steps across the room, toward Harry’s vanity. He can’t. He can’t do this. Harry is still in love with Nick, and Louis can’t accept that Harry could have turned those feelings around so quickly.

 

It’s all fabricated, just like their scores. It’s all just a fantasy, one he wanted so desperately to believe in that he even fooled himself for a while, but Louis doesn’t live in fantasy land. He does his best to keep himself in rational reality. Harry is not rational. 

 

“Lou,” says Harry, from behind him, his voice full of emotions that Louis doesn’t even want to begin unpacking. “You’re—you’re not. I love you. You know that.”

 

“I don’t know that,” says Louis. “That’s just the thing. That’s the thing. I don’t know, and I can’t know.” There are no numbers backing him up. There is only Harry, who seems like a lit fuse of emotions about to explode in Louis’s face, the way his plans with Nick blew up on the very night they were supposed to be Matched. And Louis can’t—he can’t be someone’s replacement, and he can’t be rejected again. 

 

“Lou,” says Harry, voice shaking. 

 

“You’ll find someone else,” said Louis, letting go of his hair and smoothing his hands over his own t-shirt. His throat hurts, and his eyes hurt, and he doesn’t want to cry  _ now,  _ in front of Harry. 

 

Harry will find someone, but maybe Louis won’t. He wasn’t compatible with anyone in this academy; maybe he’ll never find anyone. All he’s ever wanted was somebody to love. He just wants to be Matched with someone who will laugh at his jokes and curl up with him, with cat videos and coffee. Tomorrow will be another Matching night, except then he will be completely alone, no more Harry, no more anybody. Just Louis and his compatibility, which will always be bad. 

 

He had thought, for a while there, that he’d found someone who really liked him. It doesn’t even need to be love—just someone who likes him enough to enjoy being around him, even in the silence, even when he has nothing to say. Maybe he’ll find someone else who can stand him, but they won’t be Harry and Louis feels cracked, broken. 

 

He had thought that Harry...but he loves him. He loves him, he loves him, and he can’t handle sitting in that waiting room tomorrow, waiting to get permanently inked, and watching Harry chicken out. Too afraid of the commitment, once again. Too good to get Matched with someone like Louis. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

Louis smiles for the graduation photos, hugs Liam and even Zayn and gets hoisted into the air by Niall. Then he stands to the side while he watches the rest of his academy crying and embracing each other, the noise in the cafeteria rising and rising. He can’t see Harry’s big shoulders and curly hair, and there’s a hole in the middle of his chest, aching to be near him. To be standing in the shelter of his side while people hug them both at the same time, to smell the faint coffee-cream smell of his shirt, to feel him laugh instead of hearing it. To know that they’re going to be together after this. 

 

They’re not going to be together after this. This is his last day with Harry, the last time he’ll ever see him, and he doesn’t even know where Harry is. Off partying with his friends, maybe. Crying about the fact that he’ll have to go to Rejects. 

 

But...Louis’s stomach turns cold. Maybe...maybe Harry is hoping he’ll find Nick again, in Rejects. Louis is fine, but as soon as Nick is an option again… 

 

He presses himself against the cafeteria wall and wills it all to be over. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

The worst thing is, they have to sit next to each other in the waiting room. Louis’s butt aches on the hard plastic seat, and he can’t look at Harry, but he can hear his ragged breathing, can see the way his knuckles are white on top of his thighs. He keeps his eyes focused on the black-and-white tile floor, trying to think about cats, about the time he saw a solar eclipse last summer.

 

He never got around to asking Professor Zackery about his chances of getting into the Universal Space Association, mostly because—and he can admit it himself, now—he didn’t really believe he would be going to Rejects. 

 

Even now, it doesn’t feel real. That tonight, he won’t be crawling into the same dorm bed as Harry, kissing his mouth messily and laughing themselves to sleep. That tomorrow morning, he won’t drink coffee so hot and chocolatey that it burns his mouth and leaves a sweet taste in his throat. That he and Harry are over. That he’ll never hold his hand again.

 

For some reason it seizes him—he’ll never hold his hand again—and he glances panicked up at Harry’s face. Fuzzy curls and red parched skin and—is that a  _ tear?  _ and Harry is wiping his mouth with his hand, licking at his upper lip. He’s crying. Harry is crying. 

 

This is a mistake. It’s all a mistake. Louis wants to cry too, wants to so badly, but he can’t and everything is messed up and it’s too late to do anything else, now—and they’re almost gone, they’re almost gone. 

 

He wants to hold Harry’s hand one last time, wants to feel the cracked skin of his warm palm holding him carefully, solidly, but he can’t and then—

 

“Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson.”

 

It’s the contrast of their names together like that—the smooth musical sound of  _ Harry Styles  _ paired with his own simple, stupid name—that makes him give a short, hysterical laugh and suddenly everyone in the room is staring at him. Louis’s whole body goes hot and guilty and he can’t believe he just made a sound like that—Harry’s face is turned towards him, a blob of red and white in his peripheral vision but Louis forces himself to his feet, can’t look at him. 

 

( _ Wants  _ to look at him.)

 

They cross the room, stepping over other people’s legs and bumping shoulders. The professor waves them inside, and Louis thinks  _ nineteen percent,  _ thinks of Nick, thinks of how this can never work, this can never work. 

 

He wants to grab Harry’s arm, but Harry steps ahead of him into the room, shoulders hunched as he goes through the doorway even though there’s no way he’s going to hit his head, and then they’re being crowded into the middle of the room, among professors. 

 

“Harry, Louis,” says the professor, glancing at the screen of his handheld tablet. “Ah. You two were the ones with the nineteen percent compatibility.” 

 

“Yes, sir,” says Harry, and Louis’s mouth is dry and cottony. Harry has his arms tight against his sides, and he’s not sobbing, not like he was on Matching night. Maybe he’s wondering why Louis rejected him. Maybe he can’t wait to get another shot to win Nick back. Maybe he’s not even sure what he feels.

 

Louis can’t be with someone who isn’t sure. He tries to swallow through his throat. This is for the best. 

 

“So,” says the professor, voice lifting in amusement, “have you two decided to accept your Match?” 

 

A pause. Louis can’t speak. Next to him, Harry clears his throat wetly and says, “No, sir.” His voice is clear, determined, but when Louis glances at him he can see that Harry’s face is blotchy and his jaw is clenched. His stomach hurts. After this, someone else will make Harry happy. Louis can’t make him happy. Everything is wrong.  _ Nineteen percent.  _

 

The professor doesn’t even look at them, just taps at his screen. “The Match between Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson has been declined,” he says. “You may remove your marks.” 

 

Other professors step forward, and numbly Louis lets them take his wrist, rubbing the ink remover over his  _ Styles.  _ Once they’re done, he lets the arm fall. Unmarked. UnMatched. 

 

“You will be transported to the post-grad academies immediately,” says the professor, looking up at them. “Once there, you will be free to travel from academy to academy as you please in search of a new Match. In the event that you find a suitable Match, you will proceed promptly to be inked, and then you will be discharged into the adult world.” 

 

At that, Louis’s throat tightens and he wipes his sweaty palms on his pants. The adult world. He has only seen glimpses of the adult world, when travelling between academies with the rest of his classmates. Being set free from the academies is so huge that he almost feels he can’t face it—doesn’t know how to face it. 

 

“You are dismissed,” says the professor, and the woman who removed his wrist marking takes Louis by the arm and steers him forcefully to the exit. Harry’s back is in his face, and Louis can see sweat stains between his shoulder blades, under his armpits. They pass through tight hallways and then up some stairs. There’s a heavy metal door with a red handle, reading DO NOT EXIT, and the professor holding Harry pushes it open. 

 

It’s brighter in the next room—in fact, it’s more of an enclosure than a room, lined with crowded benches and windows, and Louis’s heart skips. They’re really leaving. He’s really leaving his academy. Rejects will be a different complex with different people, and he’ll be allowed to travel between the locations as he pleases, searching for a soulmate. A Match who isn’t Harry. 

 

Louis makes fists and prays to gods who he doesn’t believe in that they will be allowed to ride the Hyperloop together. But as the professor loosens her grip on Louis’s arm, she says, “You will be transported to different locations on the next capsules. Louis, you are assigned to capsule 31-North, and Harry, you will be riding 58-E.” 

 

Louis glances up at Harry again, wiping his hands on his pants again. Harry’s head is ducked, looking at the ground. 

 

“Your capsules will be arriving in the next—” The professor points to the red lettered screens, displaying arrival times and destinations and other complicated information that Louis doesn’t understand— “three minutes. You will now have the opportunity to say your final goodbyes.” 

 

She releases Louis’s arm and steps back to the heavy door. Louis turns in time to see her and the other professor disappearing down the stairs again, and then he looks up at Harry, who has his hands clasped in front of him, looking up at the screens again. 

 

Louis wants to say something—anything. He needs to remember Harry’s voice, and with a shock of horror he realizes that as soon as Harry’s gone, he won’t be able to remember his face. His face blindness is bad enough that faces rarely stay in his memory for more than a couple days, if that. He needs to—he can’t forget! He’s going to forget! 

 

“Uh,” says Harry, wiping his mouth with a shaky hand. He’s looking at the walls of the Hyperloop academy, where the capsules will be arriving. “I...I guess…” 

 

This is it. This is his goodbye. (He’s going to forget, he’s going to forget.) Louis grabs his hand, sweaty and limp—he needs to hold his hand one last time. He needs—he needs. “Harry,” he says, and it comes out louder than he intends, and Harry turns to look at him with wide eyes. 

 

“Can I hug you?” he asks. “We only have—there’s only a few minutes.” 

 

Louis nods, dumbly, lets Harry wrap his arms around him. His body is warm and trembly, and Louis puts his hands on his back, feeling Harry breathe against him. 

 

Harry puts his face into Louis’s hair, pressing kisses to the side of his head, one on his temple. Louis’s skin burns where his lips touched. “Lou,” he mumbles, and Louis waits, Louis waits and wants but nothing else comes. After a moment, there’s a rumbling sound and the floor trembles beneath them, and Harry’s arms tighten. Louis makes himself open his eyes, sees the Hyperloop speed into the station. It’s capsule 31-North. It’s his capsule. He has to leave.

 

He pushes Harry off and Harry’s arms come up to catch at his arms, and Louis is frozen there for a split second, looking at Harry’s red-rimmed eyes, and then he’s looking down, at the cold concrete, away from Harry. Harry lets his hands fall. Louis wants to kiss him goodbye but the dirty feeling is crawling up his neck again, like the first time Harry tried to kiss him there. 

 

“Um,” whispers Harry, and it’s deep and cracked and then Harry is rubbing at his face, at his mouth. “Thank you.” 

 

Every part of Louis hurts—aches—because that’s not what he wants to hear _ ,  _ that’s not what he needs to hear, but he’s too afraid to ask for what he needs, too afraid to just  _ take.  _ He can’t say anything in return. 

 

Above their heads, a robotic voice announces, “31-N, to Post-Grad Station 861 North.”

 

“I have to go,” Louis hears himself say, also robotic, and he turns around, walks towards the capsule, nearly blind. Nearly suffocating. 

 

And then he’s being crowded inside, shoulder to shoulder with the other passengers, and his brain realizes that it can’t remember Harry’s face and his chest panics—he goes to turn around, to get one last look at the way Harry’s cheeks stand out raw and red and the way his eyes look white if you’re far away but—

 

—but the people are packed in too tightly and even when Louis cranes his neck their heads cover the doorway—panic surges in his throat and it’s too close, they’re all too close, they’re suffocating him they’re keeping him from Harry and Louis is going to throw up or scream and Louisisafraid—

 

The doors close with a  _ ping.  _

 

And the Hyperloop shoots the capsule off at seven hundred miles per hour, the windows blinding Louis as the capsule speeds into the sunlight. Toward the Rejects Station. He’s going to the Rejects Station. 

 

Louis can’t move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm so sorry that took so long to get out. I ended up having to move and start a new job, and settling in took longer than I anticipated. The last few chapters will all be uploaded hopefully this week! Again, I promise that this is completed already and I won't leave you guys without an ending. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who commented on this fic asking if it was still going! I promise I haven't given up, and I hope y'all haven't either :)


	18. the long run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the chapter y'all have all been waiting for! (I think!) I hope you enjoyyyy xx

Louis sleeps with three people during his first month at Rejects. None of them are people who seem interested in the same things as him. None of them have Harry’s smile and Harry’s chapped hands and Harry’s ability to talk for hours without stopping to breathe. None of them like cat videos. Louis aches inside, and every morning when he wakes up, he has to force himself to get out of bed because what’s the point if every day is the same?

 

After that month, he packs his bags and signs out and takes the Hyperloop to the next location over, Post-Grad academy 900-N.

 

It’s the same thing there. He’s tired, he doesn’t want to live in bunkrooms and it’s hard to make friends when everyone is moving so much. It’s like all anyone wants to do is fuck in the dirty beds, in the bathrooms, even in the hallways.

 

He misses Harry. He expected Rejects to be teeming to be people excited to get Matched for real, but it’s a lot of sex and sad people and he begins to understand that he’s one of them. One of the rejected ones.

  


* * *

 

 

He’s on his third location before he sees a familiar face. It’s Niall, flying through the common room on a hoverboard he must have bought on the black market, screeching “Louis!” when he spots him.

 

They end up on the floor, sitting with their backs pressed to the wall of the common room. “Rejects?” says Niall, grinning at Louis with his ears sticking out of a freshly-cut head of hair, and Louis feels a twinge of admiration because Niall can smile through anything, can’t he. “Really? I didn’t peg you guys for it.”

 

“Well,” says Louis, scratching at his leg, “nineteen percent, you know.”

 

Niall nods, and it’s a relief to be around someone who knows him, someone who isn’t looking to fuck him, someone who remembers Harry. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess so. But you guys never said anything. Did something happen?”

 

Louis tries to think how to explain. It all seems so tangled up. “I got scared,” he says, at last.  

 

Niall looks across the room, mouth pursed in thought. “Huh,” he says. “That’s alright, mate. Melissa was the same way.”

 

Louis looks at him.

 

“She just was never sure if I was the person she wanted to be with.” Niall leans back. “I guess I never was. She graduated with her Match, I heard, so I guess she figured it out.”

 

He doesn’t sound bitter. Louis wishes, in that moment, that he could be like Niall—a boy who had never been anything but supportive, even though he knew their compatibility, a boy who manages to stay upbeat in the Rejects academies. “Oh,” he says. “I’m very sorry.”

 

“S’okay,” says Niall, easily. “Wasn’t meant to be. Anyway, I’m trying to get over her, ‘cause it’s gonna fuck up my compatibility with anyone else if I don’t.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Niall looks at him. “Y’know. Me and Zoe had shit compatibility, and it was mostly my fault. I was in love with Melissa, and all. The professor told me that if I wasn’t so attached to Melissa, me and Zoe might have been in the eighties, maybe even nineties.”

 

Louis’s brain is processing. “Wait, that—that affects compatibility?”

 

“Apparently, yeah,” says Niall, raising his eyebrows. “But Zoe and me wouldn’t have worked anyway, she was a tool.”

 

Louis shakes his head. Harry. Nineteen percent. “Do you think—Harry—and Nick, I mean, all that stuff about Nick—”

 

Niall raises his eyebrows higher. “I mean, dude, they were together for two years. You can’t blame him for being in love with Nick. I know it ruined your compatibility, but it’s not his...”

 

Louis’s heart is in his throat. Nineteen percent. Harry was in love with Nick, and that—that’s why. That’s why their compatibility was so low. Nights of lying next to Harry flash through his mind—nights of laughing with him, nights of listening to Harry tell him stories and holding his hand and wondering how things could be easier than this. Nights of wondering what was so incompatible about this.

 

This is why. When they took the test, Harry was in love with Nick.

 

He feels dizzy, and his mouth waters like he might throw up. It’s no good, knowing this now. If he had known this before graduation, maybe they could have asked to take another compatibility test, see if things had changed. Maybe Harry had fallen out of love with Nick. Would that have changed their score? Would it have changed Louis’s mind?

 

He doesn’t know.

 

“I didn’t know,” he says. It sounds loud. “I didn’t know. I thought our compatibility was just low because I’m unlikable.”

 

“Mate,” says Niall, patting him on the shoulder. “Harry liked you.”

 

Louis shakes his head, but his mind is racing. Maybe if they had known—maybe if they’d had their compatibility retested, maybe things could have been different. _Maybe—_ but Louis doesn’t live in maybes.

 

Right now he wants to.

 

“Did you ever tell him this?” he asks. “That being in love with Nick affected our compatibility?”

 

“Did I ever tell Harry?” says Niall. “Nah, the professors only told me after Zoe and I declined our Match. I mean, it could’ve been other things, too. Harry snores, maybe that was why. It’s fucking annoying.”

 

Louis _knows_ that—knows because he slept next to Harry for three whole months, listened to his snoring on nights when it was soothing and nights when it made him want to shake him awake in frustration. He knows that other things could have destroyed their compatibility, he knows that he’s unlikable, he knows that Harry might _still_ be in love with Nick.

 

Might be with Nick, right now.

 

He sits back against the wall. It’s too late for him and Harry. Maybe it was always too late for him and Harry.

 

* * *

 

 

Post-Grad academy 116-East. His tenth Rejects location.

 

It’s been two months now, since graduation. Louis has slept with seven people. None of them was Niall, even though Niall jokingly suggested it, before setting Louis up with someone he knew. Niall wanted to go south, so Louis doesn’t know where he is now. Hopefully out of here.

 

Louis wants to get out, too. He’s begun to take the Hyperloop to new locations just to see glimpses of the outside world through the windows in the Hyperloop stations. Sometimes he only spends a day or two in a location. Rejects seems endless, but someday he will reach the end, someday he will have visited every academy. He still keeps hope that by then, he will have found a Match.

 

It’s early in the morning when he crawls out of bed, glancing back at the girl from last night. He guesses that now he’s slept with seven and a half people, because this girl changed her mind before taking off her underwear and went to smoke an illegal cigarette in the hallway. She had smelled bad when she came back to bed, but Louis let her sleep there anyway.

 

Now he just needs to get out. He sneaks to the door of the bunkroom, quietly because its early and he doesn’t want to wake anyone up. Maybe he’ll travel to a new location today, even though he just got here yesterday.

 

The academy is deserted at a time like this—four in the morning? Five?—and Louis slides his hand along the handrail on the staircase, taking the steps slowly so he can enjoy the sound of his shoes touching each stair. It’s one of those eerily still moments, when he’s caught up in little things like his fingernails scraping the nails in the metal handrail, balancing both feet on the edge of the step, teetering on his toes just to feel the thrill in his throat—

 

A boy comes around the bottom of the staircase, curly hair bathed in the sunlight from the window above them, and Louis teeters back, gripping the handrail—

 

The boy looks up. It’s Harry.

 

It’s Harry.

 

Louis chokes. He goes to take a step backwards, and the heel of his foot hits the back of the stair, and Harry’s face is wide open and surprised, halfway through the motion of tucking his hair behind his hair—and his hair is longer now, his mouth still red and chapped and dry the way Louis remembers it—

 

—and Louis is running down the stairs so fast that it’s more likely falling, falling and catching himself just in time and it’s a blur of thrills exploding all over his body and he nearly trips over his feet, throws himself around Harry’s neck, sending Harry staggering backwards and he’s warm and they hit the stone wall of the stairwell and Louis buries his face in Harry’s shoulder, his warm shoulder, and _shakes._

 

“Lou!” Harry’s voice is high where it’s usually deep, and his hands scrabble at Louis’s back, fisting in his loose sleep shirt. Louis clutches him tighter, and the only thing going through his mind is that he’s not going to let Harry get away again. He clutches.

 

“I’m sorry,” is what he says into Harry’s shoulder, Harry’s shoulder that smells like coffee and mothballs, an entirely bad smell that Louis loves because it’s familiar, because he had forgotten it, and he pulls back to stare up into Harry’s face.

 

It’s all still there—the faded smile lines that will someday be crow’s feet, the green eyes, the rough red skin around his mouth. Harry is staring at him, long hair curling around his face and Louis had forgotten his face, had forgotten it, and now he _remembers—_ this is it, this is the face he had spent nights trying to remember, the face he loves.

 

“Lou,” says Harry again, “what—”

 

And while his mouth is open Louis kisses him, bumping his face because he forgets to open his own mouth—he pulls back immediately, tries again, and this time Harry meets him halfway, and his mouth is cold and wet and tastes like sleep and Louis licks at the rough skin there, at the chapped lips. The same mouth. It’s the same kiss.

 

“I love you,” he says, as Harry shifts against the wall and Louis’s knuckles scrape the stone, and the string in his hand makes him pull back, looking up into Harry’s eyes. Harry looks wild, mouth still open like they’re still kissing. He brings up one hand to rake it through his hair, to pull it off his face—

 

—and it’s like Louis’s stomach is sinking, like his whole mind is crashing down as he lowers himself off his tiptoes, loosening his grip on Harry’s neck because what if Harry doesn’t say it back?

 

“Lou,” says Harry, “Lou.” His hands go up to cup Louis’s face, big hands that could hold Louis forever and Louis lets him, watching as Harry’s eyes go wet. He doesn’t take his hands away to wipe at the tears that slip out of his eyes, doesn’t wipe at his mouth like he always does, just holds Louis there. Louis, standing on the bottom stair so that they’re finally eye-to-eye, looking at Harry, Harry crying like the day they met. Like it’s Matching night again.

 

Louis’s eyes are hot, too. He moves in again, kisses Harry’s mouth, soft and gentle. Once, a nose touch, twice. Harry’s thumbs rub across Louis’s cheeks and he feels the wet, realizes he’s crying.

 

They hold each other for a long while, sunlight filtering in over their heads, and then Harry kisses Louis’s head and says, voice breaking, “I want, I want to try again.”

 

Louis nods. ( _I love you, I love you, I love you.)_

 

Harry kisses his hair again, and again, down the sides of his face, and against his mouth again. His hands, warm and sweaty, cradle Louis’s face. Their eyes meet and Louis thinks that Harry’s eyes will kill him, raw and white and wet. “This time,” says Harry, and it’s deep and heavy and it feels like a promise, “I’ll do better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems like a lot of y'all were afraid last chapter that there wouldn't be a happy ending, but I hope things are looking different now! As always, thank you for the kind words, and I'm glad to be back!


	19. all systems go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *gasp* could it BE... me updating this??? 
> 
> I'm seriously sorry for leaving this hanging so long after I said I would finish it, haha. Things ended up getting out of hand, I went through a big breakup, etc. I hope people still want this ending, and thank you to those of you who commented checking up on me. I'm all good, just a bit of a chaotic mess sometimes!!
> 
> This is the last chapter before the epilogue, so it's a short one. I'm considering posting another fic after this, though, so lmk if that's something you'd wanna see!

Harry is careful and hesitant, for the first week, and his smiles aren’t as wide. They decide to stay in the same location for now, while they figure things out, and they drink coffee together for breakfast and sleep in Harry’s bunk. Harry starts tying his hair back in stubby, curly ponytails, white ribbons and pink headbands.

 

It’s a week and a half before they talk about things. Harry is swaddled in the bed, post-nap, while Louis lies sideways across his bunk and reads articles about the environmental effects of the Hyperloop. He reaches the end of the article and then turns off the tablet, staring at the screen and kicking his legs and thinking. Harry sneezes into the blanket. 

 

“Hey, Lou,” he says, voice deep and soft. Louis closes his eyes because that voice could put him to sleep and drag him back again. “Can I ask you something?”

 

“Yes,” says Louis. He knows what’s coming.

 

Harry sniffles, and Louis glances up quickly, thinking he’s crying—but it’s just the sneeze, and after Harry rubs his nose on the blankets, he says, “Why did you want to decline our Match?” 

 

Louis watches him, his red face, his fingers picking at the blanket while they stare at each other’s eyes. Finally he breaks the contact, looks at Harry’s hands instead as he says, “I was afraid you were still in love with Nick.” 

 

Harry coughs wetly. Louis’s stomach tightens, and he shifts onto his side, looking back up Harry’s face. 

 

“It’s not that I didn’t want you,” Louis says, trying not to sound defensive. “I did, I just. I got afraid.” He rubs his elbow. “I needed...I need somebody who I know loves me.” 

 

Harry swallows. He nods. “I,” he says. “I was afraid, too. I was afraid that I was still in love with Nick.” 

 

Louis’s throat feels heavy, full. He wants to be closer to Harry, suddenly—he’s cold and Harry seems impossible, too far away. He scoots forward on the sheets and asks, “Are you?” 

 

Harry shakes his head. Louis holds his breath. 

 

“I ran into him,” says Harry, and it’s clear even though it’s quiet. “In my second location. He’s doing well, I think.” 

 

“Oh,” says Louis. 

 

“And all I could think about was you.” 

 

Louis ducks his head, eyes hot again and then Harry’s clambering forward across the bed, wrapping his arms around him, and Louis leans in. He puts his face in Harry’s shoulder, and Harry smooths his hair, rubs his back as Louis cries hot tears onto his shirt. 

 

“I know now,” Harry whispers, into Louis’s hair, kissing his head. “I just needed time. I needed to see him again. I don’t want him. I only want you. I know I don’t deserve you, Louis, but I want you. I want you.” 

 

Louis’s heart aches, but it’s a good ache now, all the tears from the last month wracking his body until he can’t breathe, until he’s literally gasping for air as he rocks up and down the waves of sobs. Harry squeezes him tightly, tighter, holds him. 

 

“I want you, I want you. Louis. It’s only you.”    
  


 

* * *

 

 

“I want to travel.” 

 

Harry’s hand stills on his back, where he’s been giving Louis a massage before dinner. “Right now?” 

 

Louis nods. “I want to take the Hyperloop.” 

 

They’ve already talked about getting Matched again for real, about getting their names inked onto each other’s wrists permanently. Harry wants to, and Louis doesn’t care about their compatibility score. He thinks he can judge compatibility perfectly fine, himself, but he wants a few more weeks, maybe even a few months, before he decides completely. The rest of his life is a big decision. And Rejects goes on forever. 

 

“Why?” asks Harry. “Are you tired of this location? I guess it rains a lot.” 

 

“Actually, I kind of like the rain,” says Louis. “But we could go south. That’s where Niall is. Maybe we’ll run into him.” 

 

Harry goes back to rubbing his back. “Okay,” he says. “That could be fun. Whatever you want.” 

 

And so they do, they sign out of that location the next morning and get their Hyperloop passes to Post-Grad academy 230-SE. Louis picks the location specifically, won’t tell Harry why until they’re sitting in the Hyperloop academy and Harry reads their passes, reads the times posted on the screen.

 

“Our capsule doesn’t come for another two hours,” he says, sounding betrayed. “I have to pee.” 

 

Louis leans against his arm, kisses his jaw. “That  _ is  _ a dilemma,” he agrees, and Harry smacks his leg, and Louis laughs. After a moment, Harry laughs, too. 

 

“Why did you do this,” he says. 

 

Louis points across from them, at the big windows in the white-metal walls. They can see the city from here, a city where they might be living together, after this is all over. Free. 

 

“I like to look,” he explains. “That’s the world. The real world.” It’s easy to believe, when you live in the enclosures, that the academies are the world, but they aren’t. The academies house them from the time they’re born until they graduate at eighteen, but they still have a whole life ahead of them. The doctors estimate that Louis will live to be a hundred and twenty. That’s a hundred years that he’ll live out there, in the real world, no curfew and no classes, maybe with Harry. His Match.

 

Harry is quiet for a moment. “I love you,” he says, out of the blue, and Louis snaps his head to look at him. Harry is watching him. “I love you,” he repeats, as if he’s just discovering it now, as if he’s remembering something forgotten. “I love you.” 

 

Louis’s heart, already full, overflows. 

 

Harry touches his hand hesitantly, eyes wide and afraid like Louis might not say it back, but Louis does, breathes it out as he grabs Harry’s hand, grabs the back of his neck as he pulls him in to kiss, to kiss and to breathe in and to hold, and as their mouths slide wetly together he thinks that this is it, now, for him. Not Matching night, not Highlights. 

 

Rejects, on the brink of the world, the brink of their future together.  _ This  _ is love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a huuuuge sucker for happy endings :) Next chapter is last chapter! Thank y'all for sticking with me!


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